Some Voice Deepfakes Are NOT Fraudulent

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

I’ve spent a ton of time discussing naughty people who use technology to create deepfakes—including voice deepfakes—to defraud people.

But some deepfakes don’t use technology, and some deepfakes are not intended to defraud.

Take Mark Hamill’s impersonation of fellow actor Harrison Ford.

And then there was a case that I guess could be classified as fraud…at least to Don Pardo’s sister-in-law.

Don Pardo was originally known as an announcer on NBC game shows, and his distinctive voice could be heard on many of them, including (non-embeddable) parodies of them.

With his well-known voice, NBC jumped at the chance to employ him as the announcer for the decidedly non-game television show Saturday Night Live, where he traded dialogue with the likes of Frank Zappa.

Except for a brief period after he ran afoul of Michael O’Donoghue, Pardo was a fixture on SNL for decades, through the reigns of various producers and executive producers.

Until one night in 1999 when laryngitis got the best of Don Pardo, and the show had to turn to Bill Clinton.

No, not the real Bill Clinton.

I’m talking about the SNL cast member who did a voice impression of Bill Clinton (and Jeopardy loser Sean Connery), Darrell Hammond. Who proceeded to perform an impression of Don Pardo.

An impression that even fooled Don Pardo’s sister-in-law.

Pardo continued to be Saturday Night Live’s announcer for years after that, sometimes live from New York, sometimes on tape from his home in Arizona.

And when Pardo passed away in 2014, he was succeeded as SNL’s announcer by former cast member Darrell Hammond.

Who used his own voice.