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

If you fight a video game goblin who speaks with a Cockney accent, or ask a gruff Scottish blacksmith to forge a virtual sword, you might hear the voice of actor Andy Magee.

Only it’s not quite Magee’s voice. It is a synthetic voice clone generated by artificial intelligence.

As video game worlds become more expansive, some game studios are experimenting with AI tools to give voice to a potentially unlimited number of characters and conversations. It also saves time and money on the “vocal scratch” recordings that game developers use as placeholders to test scenes and scripts.

The response from professional actors has been mixed. Some fear that AI voices could replace all but the most famous human actors if major studios have their way. Others, like Magee, are willing to give it a try, if they get reasonable compensation and their voice isn’t abused.

“I didn’t really expect AI voices to be my break into the industry, but unfortunately I was offered paid voice work and I was grateful for any experience I could gain at the time,” says Magee, who grew up in Northern Ireland and has previously worked as a craft brewery manager, delivery driver and farmer.

He now specializes in portraying a wide range of characters from the British Isles, turning what he once considered a party trick into a rewarding career.

AI voice clones don’t have the best reputation, in part because they have been abused to create convincing deepfakes of real people — from US President Joe Biden to the late Anthony Bourdain — saying things they never said. Some early attempts by independent developers to add them to video games have also been poorly received, both by gamers and actors – not all of whom consented to their voices being used in that way.

Most major studios have not yet deployed AI voices in any noticeable way and are still negotiating how to use them with the Hollywood actors’ union, which also represents game artists. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI fueled last year’s strikes by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, but when it comes to game studios, the union is showing signs that a deal is likely.

Sarah Elmaleh, who played the Cube Queen in Fortnite and numerous other high-profile roles in blockbuster and indie games, said she has “always been one of the more conservative voices” in the field of AI-generated voices, but now considers herself more agnostic.

“We have seen a number of applications where the (game developer’s) interest was a shortcut that was exploitative and not done in consultation with the actor,” said Elmaleh, chair of SAG-AFTRA’s Interactive Media Negotiating Committee.

But in other cases, she says, an AI voice’s role is often invisible, used to clean up a recording in the later stages of production, or to make a character sound older or younger in another phase of his virtual life.

“There are use cases that I would consider with the right developer, or where I simply think the developer should have the right to offer it to an actor, and then an actor should have the right to consider it safe and fair can be done without exploiting them,” Elmaleh said.

SAG-AFTRA has already struck a deal with an AI voice company, Replica Studios, which was announced last month at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas. The deal – which SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher described as “a great example of AI done right” – will allow major studios to work with unionized actors to create a digital replica of their voice and to license. Conditions are laid down that also allow artists to choose not to have their voices used forever.

“Everyone says they do it with ethics in mind,” but most don’t and some train their AI systems with voice data taken from the internet without the speaker’s consent, says Shreyas Nivas, CEO of Replica Studios.

Nivas said his company licenses characters for a certain period of time. To clone a voice, it schedules a recording session and asks the actor to speak a script, either in his regular voice or in the voice of the character he is voicing.

“They decide whether they want to continue with this,” he said. “It creates new revenue streams. We don’t replace actors.”

It was Replica Studios who first approached Magee about a voice-over audio clip he had created demonstrating a Scottish accent. From his home studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, he has since created a number of AI replicas and pitched his own ideas for them. For each character he records lines with different emotions: some happy, some sad, some in combat. Each mood consists of approximately 7,000 words, and the final audio dataset spans several hours and includes all of a character’s styles.

Once cloned, a paying subscriber to Replica’s text-to-speech tool can make that voice say almost anything – within certain guidelines.

Magee said the experience has opened doors for a series 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, has not yet agreed to lend his voice to an AI replica. But he understands why studios would want them as they try to scale up gaming franchises like Baldur’s Gate and Starfield, where players can explore vast, open worlds and encounter elves, warlocks or aliens around every corner.

“How do you populate thousands of planets with walking, talking entities, while paying every actor for every individual? At a certain point, that just becomes unreasonable,” said Alton, who is also a member of SAG-AFTRA’s Interactive Media Negotiating Committee.

Alton is also open to AI tools that reduce some of the most physically taxing work in game character creation – the grunts, screams, and other sounds of characters in battle, as well as the jumping, punching, falling, and dying motions required are in motion. capture scenes.

“I’m one of those people who isn’t really interested in banning AI,” Alton said. “I think there is a way forward for the developers to get their tools and make their games better, while involving the artists so that we preserve the human artistry.”