Yes, we should prepare for the coming of AI. However, we overestimated the rate of AI development. Iirc 80% of investors lost money from investing in AI companies because the technology is not up to scratch yet. I mean, how many people asked something from ChatGPT and gave you wrong answers frequently?
As a general intelligence tool yeah it’s not good. But for gemerating art or replicating voices, it’s much more usable, especially when you can spend some time tweaking it a bit or making small changes to the output to get close enough to what you want. If that process is cheaper than hiring real people for the job (or if it’s faster) that’s going to be a huge motivator for producers to cut jobs.
Honestly an AI voice might be better than the male commander Shepard voice. That game is such slop.
The only protection we could possibly have HAS to be implemented by the government, look how Germany handles their workforce. They have a worker’s council, you can’t just lay off people or fire tons of people nope. Workers are protected. Here in the USA, people are just servants, building pyramids, and then tossed to the street.
My idea: if a company employs over 50 employees, it should be ILLEGAL to outsource any job overseas, or replace them with AI. Example, voice actors. Should not be legal. Small studios / indie, should be perfectly legal since these are individuals that struggle to get started.
Your idea is one of the specific reasons many companies try to label everyone as an “independent contractor”. Especially people like voice actors are not “employees”, and thus do not count as such for your idea.
Unions can organize without the government having any protections. It’s very difficult to organize that way. It’s difficult to organize even with the most union-friendly government imaginable. But either way, it can be done.
Unions in the US have been shot by police at before. Hard to have less government protection than that.
I have sympathy for voice actors, the situation is obviously complex for them. But, and I’ve said this numerous times to numerous people, AI voice work is probably going to end up being cheaper and much more voluminous. That’s exactly what developers need for procedurally generated games where they want to see “all” of the characters voiced.
I’m not saying anyone should try to use AI to voice main characters in standard video games. However, this isn’t about standard video games.
The fact is, mass voice work in procedurally generated games is something that can only ever be accomplished with AI.
The whole Rogue-like genre is constantly evolving. And yeah, a lot of the development is bad. If you’re in that scene, you probably know what I’m talking about - lots of dead end projects, lots of pointless feature sets, lots of pointless busywork being disguised as game mechanics, slot machine nonsense, etc, ad nauseam. Nonetheless, AI generated voice work is obviously going to be used there at some point.
I have a hard time believing that a lot of people are going to lose their jobs to AI voice work. The voice work generated through AI is not comparable to what people can do. Again, that isn’t the issue. The economy is in the dumps, and AI is the only way to afford voice work for games that are designed around procedurally generated voice work.
You can be upset at losing your job. But, throwing a wrench at a wrench because you think the wrench is screwing you, is just stupid. Corporations might screw you. But, the technology itself is just technology.
Congrats, you completely missed the point. Maybe read the actual article, before going on a rant that’s only tangentially related?
Disppointed there are no insert
Greedy Corpo:
“Aah yes, 👐 A.I. 👐 we have dismissed those claims”
Jokes aside, at least in regards to Mass Effect both voice actors bring something to the game for me
Although, I admit female shepard is consistently better throughout the triology, male shepard has his charm as Mark Meer improved on his performance throughout the trilogy. The human element can do much to elevate a weaker performance and in its own way leave a stronger impact, at least for me.
The Elcor are really where the series shines for depth of acting.
Emotional; this was my favorite game series for a long time. Excited; hopefully the upcoming one will live up to the series’ name.
To be fair the greatness of experiencing Elcor Hamlet was intended to be seen through his actions not emotions.
[Regretfully and with much sorrow] One cannot truly experience it in its 14 hour splendour
[Restrained Optimism and sadness] It will be a different game considering the people behind it and the aftermath of the trilogy. [Wistful Contentment] Having the next Mass Effect have some grounded world building and, if need be, mix elements to a compromise of old and new
While I like Mark Meer for his voice work in other Bioware games (Jade Empire for sure, also I don’t dislike maleshep at all) and his work on stuff like the irrelevant show, Jennifer Hale is just fantastic to the point where renegade femshep is to me the cannon version of Shepard
That is fair, I prefer renegade femshep as well. Jennifer Hale, for me, does her renegade lines with more menace and she carries authority better.
Male Shepard, I feel, does the vulnerable moments well, especially in 3… maybe it is a bias in the display of male lead vulnerability. I feel like Mark Meer does the more meme-worthy comedic moments better.
Generally I lean towards light hearted paragon MaleShep and badass renegade FemShep on voice preferance
Jade Empire, takes me back. Great game and had a nice morality system that effected how your character developed with skills and how the playable character interacted with the world and how it had a strong effect on type the ending that would play out.
Also thank you for the link, will have a look
