'Andor' soundtrack Vol. 1 drops on streaming

Source: Lucasfilm

If you've been loving Andor and everything about this Star Wars series, you'll be happy to hear that the first volume of its soundtrack has just dropped. You can now listen to this Andor soundtrack on streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Deezer. It contains music from the first four episodes of the show. 

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Darth Vader's voice is now AI-generated

Source: Lucasfilm / Benj Edwards

Any future appearance of Darth Vader in the Star Wars universe will no longer feature James Earl Jones's voice. The actor signed off during the creation of the Obi-Wan Kenobi show that Disney could replicate his vocal performance as Darth Vader in future projects. Disney has been able to do this with the help of an AI voice-modeling tool called Respeecher, which comes from a company in Ukraine. It can use deep learning to model and replicate human voices in a way that's almost indistinguishable from the real thing. 

This isn't the first time Lucasfilm has used Respeecher, though. They've done it with Mark Hamill's voice in The Mandalorian. So, they thought it might work with Darth Vader, too. Jones has voiced the iconic Star Wars villain for 45 years. And now at 91, he was ready to retire the character. Respeecher used archival recordings of Jones to create a voice model another actor could use to "perform" vocally using its speech-to-speech technology.

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There's a Baby Yoda Tamagotchi

Source: Bandai Namco

This feels like something that should've been around longer. But now, we finally get it. There's a Tamagotchi version of Grogu a.k.a. Baby Yoda. You take care of the little guy by feeding him squid chowder and macarons and play mini-games. You can unlock a bunch of outfits for Grogu. 

But be warned, you shouldn't overfeed him. Apparently, "if you feed the Grogu Tamagotchi too much squid chowder, the squid will jump on him." According to Bandai Namco, the Grogu Tamagotchi will be available for preorder on Amazon "soon."

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'Star Wars: The Bad Batch' returns for season 2 this fall

Disney is bringing back Star Wars: The Bad Batch. And its second season is coming in the fall over on Disney+. During Disney's Star Wars Celebration 2022 event, the company shared the first trailer for season two. And we now know that it'll be released this fall.

The trailer suggests it picks up after what looks like a time skip. The Clone Force 99 members look older and sporting updated armour. If you have been waiting for the drop of this series, at least now you have a specific timeframe to look at.

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