*Courtesy of Kevin Winter, Getty Images*

Legendary theatre and film actor James Earl Jones passed away earlier this week at 93 year old, and the question of his voice-usage for Darth Vader has become a hot topic of discussion.

Since 1977’s ‘Star Wars,’ the actor provided his voice throughout the saga. Although Jones was not directly involved in the 2022 Disney+ series ‘Obi Wan-Kenobi,’ his voice was used as he signed over rights to Disney to archive his voice work. Jones made the deal with Ukrainian startup Respeecher, which used AI to sift through audio from the actor’s early Darth Vader projects in order to generate new lines of dialogue for the Disney+ series.

It’s unknown if Jones’ voice will be used for other Disney projects including future roles as Mufasa — a role he originally portrayed in 1994s ‘The Lion King.’

Recently, SAG-AFTRA was among the organizations praising the California state Senate for passing law AB 1836, requiring consent to use digital replicas of deceased performers.

“This bill would make a person who produces, distributes, or makes available the digital replica of a deceased personalitys voice or likeness in an expressive audiovisual work or sound recording without specified prior consent liable to any injured party in an amount equal to the greater of $10,000 or the actual damages,” reports Digital Democracy.

Back in March, Tennessee became the first state to enact legislation aimed at protecting musicians from unauthorized voice usage through AI manipulation and deepfakes with the ELVIS Act (Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security). Violations of the ELVIS Act can be enforced in a civil cause of action and criminally enforced as a Class A misdemeanor, which carries penalties of up to 11 months, 29 days in jail and/or fines up to $2500.

See James Earl Jones reprise his Darth Vader voice role in ‘Rogue One: A Story Wars Story’ (2016):