cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/gaming/t/354777
Twitter thread in the link
Henry Schrader:So, to anyone who doesn’t know, Hi-Rez Studios, the people behind Paladins and Smite, have stated that they will be using AI to clone voices and refused to add in any words to contracts that would protect actors from it. More info in the thread. Please share to other VAs.
It sucks that I can’t boycott their garbage anymore than I already do.
It will be interesting to see how these kind of things develop over the next few years. Of course, it’s very enticing for developers to use AI voices, as they can probably save massive amounts of money through it. Will the voice actors have any options to stop this?
Unionizing. Voice actors’ union can say no work will be done with studios using ai voices. Similarly to what writers guild is doing towards Hollywood.
Collective pressure and bargaining works.
Will it work 100%? Nope. But it will work well enough.
I mean it won’t be too long until they don’t need any human VAs at all, so they could just completely ignore the union.
And lots of non-VAs/amateurs/non-union-VAs will be willing to sell their voice for a day’s work and a shockingly small cheque. You don’t need professional voice actors if you can get a wide enough range of voices to mix to simulate any desired voice. “Voice mixing” will be a new job pretty quickly.
I will happily continue to not pay for games that do this and I won’t be missing out on anything.
This is on par with restaurants that microwave garbage food. They’re phoning it in to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the product. That tells me you don’t want to make games people enjoy, you want to make games that do nothing but maximize profit. I ain’t here for that shit. I’m willing to pay money for companies that respect art and trades, not ones that worship capitalism and exist to appease assholes in suits.
I definitely think some sort of residuals or compensation for reusing their voice AI should happen if they are profiting off of it.
That being said, I see a world in the very near future where voice actors don’t even act out their lines and just say a number of things for recording to train an AI voiced version of themselves. Then directors/creators and just manipulate and use it as they please to create their product.
Some mods in games are getting this already, voiced Morrowind and the like, and I definitely seeing it as a boon. Voice acting has always been a weak point when it came to stuff like that as you can write/script/design the best you can but can lack decent/any voice acting.
Interested to see how things play out.
Yep, even if they don’t clone an existing VA, they’ll be able to find others willing to sell their voice for AI, or just have an AI generate a voice from a mixture of different people. The existing VAs will then never be hired.
Accurate and well executed computer voice is a goal of too many technologies to remain unsolved for long. It sucks for the VAs, but there’s no way to go back.
Haven’t played for a couple of years now, but honestly loved Paladins and Smite appealed to me in concept (never really had enough time to spare to learn how to play MOBA). While the communities and creatives in and around the games are awesome, it’s been known that the higher-ups and some of the management are extremely shitty forever. It’s one of the reasons why the games didn’t get the attention they deserve, why the promising esports scenes around them are dead etc. Not surprised, but still sad they’ve decided to fuck over the VAs like that and shoot themselves in the foot once again in terms of reputation
