One of the joys of talking to Hank Azaria is being talked to by Hank Azaria. In normal conversation, he’ll often burst into one of the over 100 voices he’s created for characters on “The Simpsons.” In 2023, when we were working on his first guest essay for Times Opinion, I confessed to him that my kids made fun of me for doing a terrible Snake Jailbird impression despite having grown up in Southern California. He immediately offered me a Snake voice tutorial — in Snake’s voice. (As generous as he was as a teacher, I flunked “Simpsons” class.) When OpenAI revealed its voice assistant last year and it sounded very much like Scarlett Johansson, I reached out to Azaria to see what he thought of A.I.-generated voices. As one of the all-time-great voice actors, he would know better than anyone what the new technology would mean for his art. We talked about what went into a voice performance and what audiences stood to lose if generative A.I. took over from humans. In a new feature, Azaria argues that voice acting is more than a sound; it’s the sum of a lot of things, including an actor’s body and soul. And though Azaria can imagine some potential upsides to A.I.-generated voices — perhaps the ability to direct and fine-tune a re-creation of his beloved Bugs Bunny — he still wonders how machines could ever deliver the humanness that brings a character to life. Nothing makes the human case better than seeing and hearing Azaria conjure his “Simpsons” characters. So we invited him to The Times to film his body — and perhaps glimpse his soul — at work. He performed all of our favorites — Moe the bartender, Chief Wiggum, Snake, Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, Professor Frink, Superintendent Chalmers, Comic Book Guy, the Sea Captain and Duffman — so you can make your own conclusions about the difference a human makes. At least for me, seeing Azaria at work makes it hard to imagine A.I. winning this fight. I just don’t see how something that can’t laugh could ever make us laugh. Read, hear and watch more here: Here’s what we’re focusing on today:
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