Voice acting for video games is a specialized skill that requires years of practice, classes, and establishing one’s presence in the industry. For some voice actors like Troy Baker or Nolan North, a successful career can lead to a level of celebrity on par with screen performers and can even influence a person’s interest in purchasing a game. However, as with many professions, some voice actors feel concerned about advances in AI technology that could eventually replace them.
In early April, a developer named Nicich340 released a mod for The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine expansion called “A Night to Remember,” available on Nexus Mods. With nearly 13,000 unique downloads, the mod adds a completely new adventure to the game, featuring old and new characters, as well as fresh cutscenes, game assets, and voice acting.
The voice acting in “A Night to Remember” was generated using AI. More specifically, Geralt of Rivia’s new lines were produced by having AI accurately reproduce the voice of Doug Cockle, the actor who plays Geralt in The Witcher 3. For some, this is an impressive feat. For many voice actors, however, the use of AI to successfully deliver lines that are indiscernible from the real thing is worrying.
Voice actor Jay Britton, an award-winning voice actor with credits in Divinity Original Sin 2, Spellforce 3, Frostpunk, and many other games, stated in a Twitter post that “replacing actors with AI is not only a legal minefield but an utterly souless [sic] choice.”
While some commiserated with Britton’s sentiment, many responses pointed out that such technology is inevitable or compared it with using AI to create opponents in chess. In an interview with Input Mag, voice actor Natalie Winter pointed out that competition in the voice acting field is already high and adding AI into the mix will further reduce opportunities for actors.
In the case of Nicich340, the mod developer used a readily available software called CyberVoice to create the dialogue in “A Night to Remember.” There are multiple companies that create what some call “voice parodying” technologies. While developing The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian Entertainment is using Sonantic to create AI-generated voices as temporary placeholders for real actors. But there may come a time when the technology isn’t used solely for placeholders, but for replacements.
The greater a voice actor’s body of work, the easier it is for AI to parse and replicate that person’s voice. So it may be the most successful actors who find themselves being outsourced to AI. However, this worry is similar to that of screen actors when CGI started being used in films to recreate deceased actors or make older performers appear younger. So far, use of that technology has been constrained to a handful of cases and has not threatened the livelihoods of real people. Hopefully, the same will be true for voice acting.
Source: Input Mag