Netflix’s Red Hot Chili Peppers Doc Uses AI to Voice Hillel Slovak

Netflix’s new documentary about the early days of The Red Hot Chili Peppers and the influence of its founding guitarist, Hillel Slovak, uses an AI voiceover of the late musician reading through his personal journals.

Director Ben Feldman doesn’t shy away from the use of artificial intelligence to regenerate Slovak’s voice in The Rise Of The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel, including a notice early on in the film that the audio was digitally reconstructed. 

Feldman previously explained that he obtained the blessing of Slovak’s family to use AI and have “Hillel’s voice reading his own journals,” believing it was “a critical way to make his [words] feel alive.” 

The film features in-depth camera interviews with Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis and Michael “Flea” Balzary, supplemented by Slovak’s journal entries to tell the story of how the trio became best friends while attending the same Los Angeles-area high school in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

The documentary tracks the band’s early days, navigating the rock and punk scenes before becoming the now-iconic group. Slovak played on the band’s first three studio albums before dying aged 26 of an accidental heroin overdose in 1988. 

The band has made clear the Netflix documentary is not an official Red Hot Chili Peppers project, saying in January that they had “nothing to do with it creatively.” “We agreed to be interviewed out of love and respect for Hillel and his memory,” they said in a statement. “The central subject of this current 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 began streaming on Netflix on Friday, March 20, after premiering at SXSW in Austin, Texas, on March 13.