Beyond the grave: Reviving announcers with generative AI

Generative AI is a technological magician, able to perform impossible tasks – like bringing the dead back to life.

Used to ‘resurrect’ celebrities like Elvis, Tupac and Frank Sinatra, allowing them to appear onstage or in commercials, GenAI has been blurring the lines between truth and fiction. It’s also been capitalising on our collective nostalgia; Elvis fans can relive the old days and see their King once more. It’s (currently) the closest thing we have to time travel.

Guess who’s back

Legendary announcer Jim Fagan is one of the latest public figures to achieve AI-based immortality. This autumn, the National Basketball Association (NBA) returned to NBC for the first time in over two decades – complete with coverage reminiscent of the nineties NBA on NBC era, Roundball Rock and all. Teetering between familiarity and novelty, NBC Sports used what it calls ‘AI voice synthesis technology’ to recreate Fagan’s cadence for select snippets of its pro basketball promotions and broadcasts.

During his life, Fagan’s narration became synonymous with NBC’s sports coverage, accompanying NBA broadcasts as well as NFL games and the Olympics. Employing the same technology used to artificially replicate Al Michaels’ voice (who, at the time of writing, is still alive) for the 2024 Summer Games, NBC parsed its own archival audio recordings to refine Fagan’s sound – after securing his family’s blessing.

While the new NBA on NBC is certainly nostalgic, delivering the signature sound of the NBA’s heyday while appealing to a fresh generation of basketball fans, viewers are divided. “Why not use a living person?” one asked.

Another wrote, “Great commentators, athletes, coaches are special because of the limited time they are able to do what they do.”

NBC’s AI embrace coincides with tumult in other areas of entertainment. GenAI threatens to replace voice actors, doing the work for a fraction of the cost and avoiding scheduling issues altogether. It also raises ethical concerns; AI was used to recreate the late Anthony Bourdain’s voice without his estate’s permission. More recently, it’s been mimicking Morgan Freeman, whose voice has become universally recognisable. “I don’t appreciate it,” he told the Guardian, referring to AI cloning as ‘robbery’.

Out with the old?

As the AI market booms, voice generators continue to crop up – from standalone platforms like Speechify and ElevenLabs to built-in features in Google Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While NBC hasn’t revealed the exact tech it used on Fagan, it hardly matters, as voice generation and replication is becoming easy enough for anyone to do.

Besides fans finding Fagan’s resuscitation a little strange, anyone who dreams of being a broadcast announcer might also be put off. If a ghost of NBC Sports past can do the job, why hire any new talent at all?

This issue extends far beyond broadcasting. Across industries, young people are feeling edged out by AI, with entry-level roles disappearing – as well as opportunities for growth. It’s disrupting filmmaking, game development, radio and podcast production as well as broadcasting, and it was one of the major pain points during the SAG-AFTRA Hollywood strikes.

And yet, companies continue to believe that AI’s benefits outweigh its costs – and that bringing back the dead is an appropriate thing to do. Whether it is or isn’t is up to individual estates; but if NBC had access to GenAI in the nineties, they never would have hired Jim Fagan in the first place. The real cost of AI is what’s lost when we overlook new opportunities for the sake of familiarity.

Check out our December Signal here!