The cancer that caused the actor Val Kilmer to lose his voice did not deter the makers of the movie Top Gun in its second part, from invoking the famous star again, after the insistence of the star Tom Cruise.
The actor, who lost the ability to speak after undergoing treatment for throat cancer in 2014, reappeared in the second part of the film, along with star Tom Cruise, to partner with the Iceman character he played with the same disease.
Kilmer spoke several words during the film, but his voice in the scenes was entirely produced by artificial intelligence.
Val Kilmer announced in August 2021 that he had partnered with Sonantek to create his own AI-powered voice.
As Northeastern University explained, Kilmer provided Sonantec with hours of archival footage showing his true voice in life and in cinema, which was then fed to the program’s algorithms, later using the same technology to use Kilmer’s voice in the film.
“Sonantek’s work with Kilmer was due to rapid advances in sound synthesis technology over the past decade,” said Northeastern University professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders Rupal Patel.
“What was once a costly and time-consuming process that required hours of recorded or archived audio to create or restore audio, is now more streamlined and advanced than ever before,” he added.
Sonantek explained that it has produced more than 40 different audio models, and has chosen the best, highest quality and most expressive, adding that these new algorithms are now integrated into the company’s audio engine, so that future customers can also benefit from them automatically.
In turn, Kilmer said: “I am grateful to the team that reproduced my voice so brilliantly in a way I had never imagined before.”
He added, “Our ability to communicate is the essence of our being in life. This was an opportunity to tell my story, in a voice that sounds authentic and familiar…I consider it an incredibly special gift.”
Tom Cruise and his colleague Val Kilmer are the only ones who re-enacted their roles in the film, at the request of the first, whose condition was to accept the return, and the presence of Kilmer by his side in the second part.