According to a report by Good Luck Have Fun, several triple A game developerssuch as Ninja Theory and Neon Giant, they would have chosen to dub the characters of their games using artificial intelligence programsrather than professional voice actors. The company behind this technology, Altered AI, contains a library of vocal performances, including around 20 professional voice actors.
This type of dubbing based on artificial intelligence is being considered more risky from an ethical point of view compared to the similar text-to-speech, which reads sentences and repeats them in audio format. Fears center around the possibility that this type of technology could be used to replace the job of voice actor.
Ninja Theory, developer of Hellblade, and Neon Giant, developer of The Ascent, are the only two names that are openly spelled out in the report. The SAG-AFTRAan American union representing television and radio actors and artists, he has declared that «These new technologies offer new and exciting opportunities, but they can also represent a potential threat to the lives of artists. It is essential that artists control the exploitation of their digital self, are adequately compensated for its use and are able to provide informed consent ».
The concern is that such software is being used to harness the talent of actors in games where they would otherwise not be compensated. Yuri Lowenthalvoice actor who voiced Peter Parker in Spiderman in the 2018 video game, he has declared “I know an actor who does a lot of performance capture and vocal work and has seen his very specific movement appear in games he has never worked on. It’s a scary precedent that has already been set and I want to start a conversation with AI companies about how to protect the actors and, once again, the narrative ecosystem. “
According to Ioannis Agiomyrgiannakismanaging director of Altered, the technology is typically used for prototyping purposes, arguing that his company is doing for voice acting what YouTube did for video. “When you have a dialogue, you have a level of imagination. But when you bring the dialogue to the voice actors, it goes back and it doesn’t sound as dynamic as you intended. We provide an intermediate phase in which they can prototype the dialogue and have a checkpoint before arriving in the studio ».
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