About two months ago we reported to you for the first time about the quest mod “A Night to remember” for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This continues the plot about the villain Orianna from the story expansion Blood and Wine in the relatively colorful province of Toussaint. There are of course new adventures, battles, and choices that affect the course of the story.
However, the little fan extension that you Download on Nexusmods can now be a major concern of video game voice actors.
Clever AI voices
Geralt’s appearance is fully set to music in the quests and cutscenes of the new mod – and even with a voice that is confusingly similar to that of the real speaker Doug Cockle.
This is how Geralt’s voice got into the mod: The developers of the mod used the Russian Cybermind software from Cybermind Simulation Labs. This allows an AI to be trained on the basis of existing recordings so that it can then generate new lines with the selected voice. The resulting voice lines are almost indistinguishable from the real voice actor.
You can see how realistic the AI works in the following YouTube video from the fan developer:
Link to YouTube content
However, the technology is not completely new: On websites like vo.codes Dozens of voices from celebrities, politicians and series characters are available to whom you can put all kinds of sentences in the mouth. Among others, Homer Simpson, Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sir David Attenborough will be there. There are also projects on the Github developer platform with which you can “clone” voices in real time
Worry about voice actors
However, technical advances are a major concern for some voice actors. Jay Britton, whose voice can be heard in Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Pathfinder: Kingmaker, is worried about his job on Twitter:
“If that’s true, it’s just heartbreaking. Yes, AI could replace things, but should it? We literally have a choice.
Replacing actors with AI is not just a legal minefield, it’s a completely soulless decision.
Why not remove all human creativity from games and use AI … ”
Various studios are already using similar software. The role-playing game experts at Obsidian, for example, rely on Sonantic to give the NPCs placeholder voices during development – this makes it easier to find out whether the dialogues are working as planned. Later, the AI voices will be replaced by real dubbing actors, as they explain in the following video:
Link to YouTube content
Another Problem: Voice actors fear that such software could be used to put reputationally damaging statements, such as racist or homophobic, into their mouths. However, Sonantic emphasized in an interview with the Input Magazine, that speakers don’t have to worry about hate speech. If a developer wants to generate new lines with the voice of an actor, they must finally approve the recordings to prevent abuse.
However, nobody will be able to prevent people from using the freely available alternatives for such purposes – especially in combination with so-called deep fake videos, explosively manipulated materials could arise in the near future.
