Loss Of Voice Due To Cancer, Val Kilmer Speaks Again Through AI Technology

Hollywood star Val Kilmer is back to talking thanks to AI technology. (photo: youtube)

Jakarta - Val Kilmer would like to reintroduce you to his voice. After being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, the 61-year-old actor lost the ability to speak properly after undergoing a tracheotomy.

Now, after a year of working with the AI voice technology company Sonantic, the "Top Gun" star can communicate using a computer-generated replica.

The company posted a message from the star, in his own words, in his own voice:

"We all have the capacity to be creative. We are all driven to share our deepest dreams and ideas with the world," says Val in the clip who sounds like her but is younger.

"When we think of the most talented creative people, they speak to us in unique ways. A phrase we hear often is 'have a creative voice.'"

"But I got throat cancer. After treatment, my voice as I knew it was taken from me. People around me struggled to understand when I spoke,"

"But despite all that I still feel I'm the exact same person," he continued. "Still the same creative soul. A soul that dreams of ideas and stories confidently, but now I can express myself again, bring these ideas to you, and show you this part of me once again."

"The part that never really goes away. Just hides."

In a blog post, Sonantic co-founder John Flynn said the project was particularly challenging, as they were trying to duplicate something that no longer exists.

"When we create a voice model with actors capable of performing their dialogue, we provide a set script. The actors record the performance of the script, then we feed the recorded audio into our proprietary Voice Engine, which trains the AI model. The Voice Engine provides a variety of capabilities manual and automatic to check the quality of the model," he wrote.

"When an actor can't get a line from our script—as in Val's case—we need to do a bit more manual work. The first step is to collect the actor's audio recordings. For best results, we need to clean the audio, with minimal background noise, in highest quality format."

He said his team had to develop new technology specifically for the project, as Kilmer could only provide 10 percent of the amount of old recordings normally required to create artificial sound.

In the end, the star was more than happy with what he heard... and said.

"I'm grateful to the entire team at Sonantic for expertly restoring my voice in ways I could never have imagined," he said.

"As humans, the ability to communicate is at the core of our being and the effects of throat cancer have made it difficult for others to understand me. The opportunity to tell my story, in a voice that feels authentic and familiar, is a wonderful, special gift," he said.