Recommendations of the Editorial team
The new Netflix documentary about the early years of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the influence of their founding guitarist Hillel Slovak uses an AI-generated voice of the late musician, who reads out his personal diaries.
Director Ben Feldman makes no secret of the use of artificial intelligence to reconstruct Slovak’s voice in “The Rise Of The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel” – early in the film there is a note indicating that the audio recordings were digitally recreated.
Feldman previously said he had sought permission from Slovak’s family to use AI and “let Hillel’s voice read his own diaries” – believing this was “a crucial way to bring his words to life.”
Kiedis and Flea in an interview
The film contains extensive on-camera interviews with Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis and Michael “Flea” Balzary, supplemented by Slovak’s diary entries. Together they trace how the trio became best friends at the same school in the Los Angeles area in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The documentary follows the band’s early years as they struggled through the rock and punk scenes before becoming the iconic group they are today. Slovak contributed to the band’s first three studio albums before dying of an accidental heroin overdose in 1988 at the age of 26.
The band has made it clear that the Netflix documentary is not an official Red Hot Chili Peppers project. In January they said they had “nothing to do with it creatively.” “We agreed to the interview out of love and respect for Hillel and his memory,” they said in a statement. “The real subject of this Netflix special is Hillel Slovak, and we hope it sparks interest in him and his work.”
The Rise Of The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel is available on Netflix on Friday, March 20th, following its premiere at SXSW in Austin, Texas on March 13th.
