Some video game actors are letting AI clone their voices. They just don’t want it to replace them

If you are struggling with a video game goblin who speaks with a Cockney accessory, or asking a gruff Scottish blacksmith to forge a digital sword, you may well be listening to the voice of actor Andy Magee.

Except it’s now not reasonably Magee’s voice. It’s a man-made voice clone generated by way of synthetic intelligence.

As video game worlds get extra expansive, some game studios are experimenting with AI gear to give voice to a doubtlessly limitless collection of characters and conversations. It additionally saves money and time at the “vocal scratch” recordings game builders use as placeholders to take a look at scenes and scripts.

The reaction from skilled actors has been blended. Some worry that AI voices may just replace all however probably the most well-known human actors if giant studios have their approach. Others, like Magee, were keen to give it a take a look at if they are quite compensated and their voices are not misused.

“I hadn’t really anticipated AI voices to be my break into the industry, but, alas, I was offered paid voice work, and I was grateful for any experience I could get at the time,” stated Magee, who grew up in Northern Ireland and has up to now labored as a craft brewery supervisor, supply motive force and farmer.

He now makes a speciality of voicing a various vary of characters from the British Isles, turning what he used to believe a birthday party trick right into a rewarding profession.

AI voice clones don’t have the most efficient popularity, partly as a result of they have got been misused to create convincing deepfakes of actual other folks — from U.S. President Joe Biden to the late Anthony Bourdain — pronouncing issues they by no means stated. Some early makes an attempt by way of impartial builders to upload them to video video games have additionally been poorly won, each by way of avid gamers and actors — now not all of whom consented to having their voices utilized in that approach.

Most of the massive studios have not but hired AI voices in a noticeable approach and are nonetheless in ongoing negotiations on how to use them with Hollywood’s actors union, which additionally represents game performers. Concerns about how film studios will use AI helped fuel closing yr’s moves by way of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists but if it comes to game studios, the union is appearing indicators {that a} deal is most probably.

Sarah Elmaleh, who has performed the Cube Queen in Fortnite and a large number of different high-profile roles in blockbuster and indie video games, stated she has “always been one of the more conservative voices” on AI-generated voices however now considers herself extra agnostic.

“We’ve seen some uses where the (game developer’s) interest was a shortcut that was exploitative and was not done in consultation with the actor,” stated Elmaleh, who chairs SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee for interactive media.

But in different instances, she stated, the function of an AI voice is continuously invisible and used to blank up a recording within the later phases of manufacturing, or to make a personality sound older or more youthful at a distinct level of their digital lifestyles.

“There are use cases that I would consider with the right developer, or that I simply feel that the developer should have the right to offer to an actor, and then an actor should have the right to consider that it can be done safely and fairly without exploiting them,” Elmaleh stated.

SAG-AFTRA has already made a maintain one AI voice corporate, Replica Studios, introduced closing month on the CES system display in Las Vegas. The settlement — which SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher described as “a great example of AI being done right” — enables major studios to work with unionized actors to create and license a digital replica of their voice. It sets terms that also allow performers to opt out of having their voices used in perpetuity.

“Everyone says they’re doing it with ethics in mind,” but most are not and some are training their AI systems with voice data pulled off the internet without the speaker’s permission, said Replica Studios CEO Shreyas Nivas.

Nivas said his company licenses characters for a period of time. To clone a voice, it will schedule a recording session and ask the actor to voice a script either in their regular voice or the voice of the character they are performing.

“They control whether they wish to go ahead with this,” he said. “It’s creating new revenue streams. We’re not replacing actors.”

It was Replica Studios that first reached out to Magee about a voice-over audio clip he had created demonstrating a Scottish accent. Working from his home studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, he’s since created a number of AI replicas and pitched his own ideas for them. For each character he’ll record lines with distinct emotions — some happy, some sad, some in battle duress. Each mood gets about 7,000 words, and the final audio dataset amounts to several hours covering all of a character’s styles.

Once cloned, a paid subscriber of Replica’s text-to-speech tool can make that voice say pretty much anything — within certain guidelines.

Magee said the experience has opened doors to a range of acting experiences that don’t involve AI — including a role in the upcoming strategy game Godsworn.

Voice actor Zeke Alton, whose credits include more than a dozen roles in the Call of Duty military action franchise, hasn’t yet agreed to lending his voice to an AI replica. But he understands why studios might want them as they try to scale up game franchises such as Baldur’s Gate and Starfield where players can explore vast, open worlds and encounter elves, warlocks or aliens at every corner.

“How do you populate thousands of planets with walking, talking entities while paying every single actor for every single individual? That just becomes unreasonable at a point,” said Alton, who also sits on the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee for interactive media.

Alton is also open to AI tools that reduce some of the most physically straining work in creating game characters — the grunts, shouts and other sounds of characters in battle, as well as the movements of jumping, striking, falling and dying required in motion-capture scenes.

“I’m one of those people that is not interested so much in banning AI,” Alton stated. “I think there’s a way forward for the developers to get their tools and make their games better, while bringing along the performers so that we maintain the human artistry.”