FemShep and Solid Snake stars call out AI voice acting
It looks like even the voice actors leading the industry have their fair share of complaints about the progression of AI voice actors in gaming.
22nd Jun 2023 11:00
Unspash - Pramod Tiwari | Konami | BioWare
FemShep and Solid Snake stars call out AI voice acting
It looks like even the voice actors leading the industry have their fair share of complaints about the progression of AI voice actors in gaming.
22nd Jun 2023 11:00
Unspash - Pramod Tiwari | Konami | BioWare
AI seems to be seeping into every facet of our lives now, and already, we're pretty sick of it. Not only is it threatening jobs everywhere, but for many, it's ridiculing the concept of art - with AI-generated paintings and animations creating a frustrating amount of high-quality work that goes completely soulless.
It's pretty bleak, and as its progress into realism accelerates at a pace we can barely predict, people are getting worried that it's about to break into our video games. Now, two big names have come together to speak out about it.
Commander Shepard and Solid Snake call out AI voice acting
Popular voice actors Jennifer Hale (FemShep from Mass Effect) and David Hayter (Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid) have been taking on the press tour for Synapse, their new game built for PSVR2. The pair seem to have taken the opportunity to take a shot at the practice of implementing AI voices in video games.
"If I were to take your face, for example, and use it to promote my product without your permission, you'd be suing the pants off me and rightly so," says Hale in an interview with Eurogamer.
"The same is true for our voice. It's like anything else with voice acting, it gets overlooked for a minute, and everybody thinks they have the right to it, but they don't. And I believe that the legal system will absolutely bear that out. It's just going to take time."
David Hayter's AI script was terrible
Picking up this conversation, Hayter reveals that in writing a script, he turned to ChatGPT for a laugh - and it turned out just as he expected."Anybody who steals your voice should be locked up for forever, but I also have a different perspective on it," he says.
"I was writing a script, I came up with a unique idea for a movie and I thought for fun, I'll put it in ChatGPT and see what it comes back with.... And it was the worst, most clichéd, soulless, dumbest collection of words I've ever seen." It reminds us of when AI wrote a plot for The Last of Us Part 3.
It's clear that the pair aren't enthused about the idea of AI taking over video games, and it echoes recent complaints that High on Life employed AI artwork. When it comes to using AI voice acting and its applications, if we're going to take anyone's word, it's Hale and Hayter.
About The Author
Joseph Kime
Joseph Kime is the Senior Trending News Journalist for GGRecon from Devon, UK. Before graduating from MarJon University with a degree in Journalism, he started writing music reviews for his own website before writing for the likes of FANDOM, Zavvi and The Digital Fix. He is host of the Big Screen Book Club podcast, and author of Building A Universe, a book that chronicles the history of superhero movies. His favourite games include DOOM (2016), Celeste and Pokemon Emerald.
