What blows my mind is that when it comes to costs I feel like voice actors are probably less than 5% of the budget on a video game. Unless they hire a famous actor I can't imagine this being that worthwhile. It's just penny pinching.
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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It’s just penny pinching.
Imagine the pace you can just dump out new voice lines for items, maps, general quibble etc that you'd never get the budget to bring a bunch of VAs into studio to do for updates
Honestly it's probably an agility thing. You remove the entire. Getting another human to do the work thing
If you believe it hasn't occurred to them that they won't have to pay wages any more, I have a bridge to sell you.
Oh I agree with you. I just don't think they are doing this just because of that.
So let’s hear it. Hand an AI Leviathan Wakes, the first book of The Expanse, and see how it does. My money is on it being garbage, but let’s hear it.
Jefferson Mays is tough to beat as a human.
Worse, hand an AI a Terry Pratchett book, see how that goes.
I only ~~read~~ heard him read the last 3 books+ novellas after watching the show, and he REALLY did the accents well
*Except Bobbie, not enough southern hemisphere OZ/NZ twang
Audiobook narrators don’t “read”. They act. They vocally act the entire book. The ones who don’t generally get returned, unread, to either your audiobook platform choice or the library.
Voice actors in games also don’t just read. They act. They vocally act their entire role.
Jennifer Hale vs AI, who would win? Would any human other than Kate Mulgrew as Flemeth have made the character as compelling?
Technology will of course change, but I did complete an (unreleased) experiment where I made an animation with AI, using AI to provide voices. This was a few months ago.
All of the models used to generate vocal lines out of nothing are very basic and robotic. But I had a lot of success recording the lines (and songs) myself and then using an AI tool to convert it into someone else's voice. I blended two or three voices per character and for voices where the character was a different gender or age from me, it sounded like a real actor of that demographic giving the same performance I gave.
So, context matters here. Is the tech ready to replace actors completely? Not at all. But could you have an actor record all the lines in different styles and then use licensed voice models to have it sound like a given voice actor? Absolutely. Actors should think very hard before agreeing to any licensing agreements using their voices. Because it might just result in a lot of the acting removed from their job role. And potentially worse quality dialogue in the end depending on who they hire to record lines in bulk. Not to mention that it's only a matter of time before the fully AI models advance far enough to do the job completely.
Hence, why I never released my animation. People wouldn't be able to tell whose voices I used. But I would know. And I don't want to be on the wrong side of history.
Hand the AI Twilight books. It'll either delete itself or make them better?
Holy 2008 Batman
Good for them
Calling it now, EA is going to do it anyway if they haven't already, and tell them all to go pound sand.
We trained it our own games that we own
I can almost guarantee it
With judiciary cos playing lapdogs for oligarchs... Why wouldn't EA fuck the pedon
AI will replace them. All they're doing is buying themselves more time. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it will happen.
I think it is wrong, but this is inevitable.
The next time they hire actors they will just require them to train the AI as well. Voice actors will in a huge part die out. There will be some, but far less. Even A-list celebrities will in the future have to give the companies their likeness and their voice. So that companies can provide dubbing for other languages, make toys etc.
Not the A-list celebrities we have now necessarily, but the coming generations. I can't see a situation in which everyone have a united front and won't take the money
Edit: I realized this is a bit defeatist. A solution would be unions, I should have mentioned that
Since being replaced by AI is inevitable, it would make more sense for us to be figuring out how to make that world work instead of swinging swords at the ocean.
And why does it fall on the consumers and workers to figure out how to not exploit people, instead of the companies currently doing it?