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SAG-AFTRA Approves AI Voice Actors, Enrages the VA Community::SAG-AFTRA has approved AI voice actors and partnered with Replica Studios, enraging the voice acting community on a global scale.
Well, indie studios aren’t known for huge budgets - they generally don’t include voice acting at all. Between no voice acting and AI voice acting, which is better?
None. Bad voice acting is worse than none for sure. Like for example Morrowind had a pretty good story and writing but Oblivion’s voice acting has been a joke for over a decade now.
Compared to anything nowadays, yes - Oblivion was awful. But let me tell you, I played that game as a kid and it wouldn’t have been even half as interesting with no VA. When you’re a stealth archer and someone gets close to you and you think you’re safely hidden, but then you hear “you’re not supposed to be here”, it scared the hell out of 15-yo me and made me run away sooo fast. I tried morrowind just after that and couldn’t stomach playing it - no VA? At all? It was awful.
Maybe we sometimes forget, games are also for kids. Kids don’t need the best acting. And while adult me can’t take oblivion VA seriously - it is still one of the best games I’ve ever played as a child, while Morrowind never even made it into the list because I was spoiled by playing Oblivion first, with its VA, bad as it is.
Morrowind had voice acting for lines like detecting you and greetings when you got close, plus a few lines in story, most notably Dagoth Ur and Vivec.
For the majority of the story there was none while oblivion had like 11 people voice the entire thing and poorly. The voice acting of Oblivion was also accompanied by the way worse writing. I grew up on Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 and later Morrowind and those were only partially voice acted and I definitely liked that as a kid as well, at least more than I did Oblivion.
Also having voice acting limits roleplaying. That’s why in Baldurs Gate 3 even though everything else is voiced, you the player keep silent. That way they can write 6 different ways you pick what and how you would like your character to say something, even if the end result from the NPC is the same for all of them, because it doesn’t increase the VA workload at all.
…which, granted, would be something using AI would solve…
It’s a thorny issue. In the position of an indie dev/studio i get using cheap (or free) art, be it voice, textures, whatever. In a way a properly licensed ai trained voice is no different from using assets from an asset store.
On the other hand, the current crop of ai are less than fair about where they source the data, so good luck getting a morally neutral voice right now, leaving aside the legal aspect.
A big issue beyond that is how it’ll completely wreck the industry. If Alice licensed her voice for cheap, and I can get it to say whatever I need with minimal hassle why wouldn’t I use that over paying more for a voice actor, where I have to wait on them to actually record and rerecord her lines? I’d be paying more for slower results and more work.
Then you realize this is true not just for me but for most groups needing voice lines. This means that even if an individual voice seems ethically sound, considering the wider context and impact on other voice actors it becomes far less simple.
It is.
Personally, I’m not against it. Acting means by default imitating something. Pretending you are something you are not. If AI can do it as well or better than actors, I’m okay with that.
Maybe we’re at a stage where the voice actors of tomorrow will be simply those who can configure the AI to output the voice most fitting the role, rather than those who can reproduce it with their own vocal chords. They’re different skillets - I see no reason why one should be more important and worth saving than the other.
This is progress. The only bad thing about progress is that it won’t benefit the many, but the few that can capitalize on it. This, I do regret. But on the other hand - I’m sure all the horse ranchers were very much against cars when they first appeared, and not for environmental reasons, but for more selfish ones. And while it might’ve been sad for so many of them to have to start working in a different field, it’s also undeniable that cars have made a huge economic impact on the world and that living conditions as a whole have improved since their invention.
Idk. It’s a whole thing. I really hope these people can find a way to ride the wave. Because right now it looks like they’ll just be crushed by it instead, and I for one can’t justify impeding progress for the love of the few people stuck in the past.