Obi-Wan Kenobi fans are uneasy after finding out James Earl Jones’ voice cameo as Darth Vader was made possible with at least the assistance of artificial intelligence — if not generated by a computer entirely from scratch.

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Initially, fans were blown away at how good the 91-year-old Jones sounded in “Part III” of the Disney Plus prequel continuation, proclaiming it to be an even superior effort than his cameo in Rogue One. However, when fans scrutinized the credits of the episode, they discovered Respeecher was credited for “Voice Conversion Services.”

So apparently James Earl Jones didn’t record voice lines for #ObiWanKenobi and instead Disney used the same AI voice technology for Vader’s voice as they did for Luke in The Book of Boba Fett.

— Ollie 🏹 (@TheQuiver_) June 3, 2022

This led some fans to believe that perhaps Jones didn’t do any voice acting work at all for the TV show, but that instead, his performances were generated from scratch using a computer. That was a prospect one Twitter called “Utterly horrifying” and “Just pure cyberpunk dystopia hell.”

Vader's voice in Obi-Wan being credited to James Earl Jones but actually being composed of an AI generated version of his voice from hours of footage with JEJ not actually recording a second of new dialogue is

Utterly horrifying

Just pure cyberpunk dystopia hell

— The Italian Misato Katsuragi (@Blankzilla) June 3, 2022

However, there is not really any hard evidence to support that Jones didn’t do any voice acting himself. While his audio likeness being generated solely from a computer is still a possibility, as Disney has not gone into details about how the cameo came to be, the same technology was used before in The Book of Boba Fett for Mark Hamill’s reprisal as a digitally de-aged Luke Skywalker.

As Cinemablend pointed out, it’s entirely possible “that the Respeecher tech could have been used to simply augment dialogue Jones recorded specifically for Obi-Wan Kenobi to make the character sound more like he would a little under a decade before the events of A New Hope, when he’s not as fully formed.”

For one Twitter user, they saw no difference between using AI to assist a voice performance and using makeup to alter an actor’s look in a film or play.

This is literally no different than putting makeup on an actor, or changing their look somehow to make them appear younger when the story calls for it. Movies and stage productions have been doing this for decades.

— Eric (@Chaotician96) June 3, 2022

Another fan disagreed, saying the AI could rob an actor of properly conveying their intended inflection and tone in their voice.

lmao you donut, it’s robbing an actor of a performance and their voice inflection and tone. Vader sounds awful when his voice is copy/pasted using the same pool of quotes. Look how unnaturally the voice leaps in pitch when they mash it up. I AM (your father)+paste.

— Raffie Rotten, the ADHDeviant (@PwnzDr) June 3, 2022

Another Twitter user pointed out that we truly don’t know all the facts in this particular instance, but the end result is unarguably that “He does sound closer to the OG trilogy than he did in Rogue One.”

“[L]ike it or not, this is probably going to be the future,” the user said.

We don’t actually know if James Earl Jones’ voice was completely reconstructed via AI or if he did the voice and it was assisted by AI.

He does sound closer to the OG trilogy than he did in Rogue One but like it or not, this is probably going to be the future.

— Oliver Jia (オリバー・ジア) (@OliverJia1014) June 3, 2022

Regardless of whether Jones did or didn’t provide his acting talents for Obi-Wan Kenobi, there’s little doubt AI technology is accelerating at a break-neck pace. Soon, there may be a time when actors won’t even be required to portray characters in our favorite movies or TV shows. Whether your think that’s a good thing, or not, is up to you.