Perhaps what got the most attention in Morgan Neville's documentary on the life of Anthony Bourdain, "Roadrunner," was his use of generative AI to recreate Bourdain's voice.

It was "fun," Neville said recently in Wired, "to sort of keep his voice going in the film." However, his approach received intense criticism — though the synthetic Bourdain only spoke words that the real Bourdain had written, Neville said many viewers assumed, "Oh, they just made up [expletive].

"Many people told me that there were other documentary projects that were doing the same thing, that all reacted; they either changed what they were doing or put giant disclaimers over everything," he said.

Since then, the director has "assiduously avoided" using AI. Even in his new documentary "Piece by Piece," in which he dramatizes musician Pharrell's life with Legos (yes, really), Neville was careful to steer clear.

Carl Sagan in Piece by Piece says, 'Pharrell' and I was very clear to everybody that we were, with permission of his widow, going to make him say 'Pharrell' without using AI, said Neville. We actually experimented to construct the word from syllables [he actually said].