I feel like this is the kind if fringe example where ai is fine. This game is old enough to smoke, it’s original actors aren’t coming back to it, and no one of profiting off an open source moded engine to make the game run.
It’s a fringe example where it’s legally okay as the Construction Set EULA that you have to agree to to use the original engine’s modding tools grants you the right to make derivative works of the game’s assets (including the sound files) provided it’s only to make mods for Morrowind (and some other restrictions, e.g. not charging any money). For nearly any other game, no one’s granted you that right, so it’s not legal, but any other kind of modding that requires you to make things based off the game’s original files and distribute them wouldn’t be legal either.
Morally, it’s dicey as a modern voice actor contract would either have a clause about being unable to use the recordings to train voice synthesis, or charge more for the privilege, so the voice actors for Morrowind signed a right away that they didn’t intend to because their agents failed to realise it was something they could do or predict that it would ever become relevant. No one tricked anyone, but it’s not what would have been agreed to if everyone involved was clairvoyant.
While I appreciate the loophole in the EULA, I feel my stance is on something different. This is like fan art of Micky mouse. Disney doesn’t lose any money from me drawing micky, and I’m allowed to post it online. It only becomes a problem if i try to sell my art. Openmw isn’t making money off this and Bethesda wasn’t going to do it, so why should it matter if this is being done by ai or by a really skilled impersonator?
It’s not so much a loophole as they’d reasonably have expected mods that chopped up voice lines to make new sentences, and mods have been doing that for Bethesda games for years, sometimes with surprisingly effective results, but that’s obviously super time-consuming and not as good as someone just reading aloud, let alone actually acting. Generative AI can suddenly chop up voice lines to make newer ones way faster with next to no effort, and give comparable quality to the original voice actor reading lines aloud, even though it can’t do the acting part.
It’s no skin off Bethesda’s nose if people use generative AI to voice modded dialogue, but it could be a problem for the voice actors. Wes Johnson’s done voice work for mods before, so mods aren’t operating in a completely separate space to the voice actors who worked on the games. From a quick search, it doesn’t seem like he charged for any of the work he did for mods (one was specifically for a charity fundraiser), but it wouldn’t be immoral of him, or any other voice actor, to take paid commissions for mod dialogue. That’s not as viable if generative AI can compete.
Anyway, none of this is really relevant to OpenMW specifically - sound files are game content, and we don’t deal with game content
I feel like this is the kind if fringe example where ai is fine. This game is old enough to smoke, it’s original actors aren’t coming back to it, and no one of profiting off an open source moded engine to make the game run.
This is what ai should be doing.
It’s a fringe example where it’s legally okay as the Construction Set EULA that you have to agree to to use the original engine’s modding tools grants you the right to make derivative works of the game’s assets (including the sound files) provided it’s only to make mods for Morrowind (and some other restrictions, e.g. not charging any money). For nearly any other game, no one’s granted you that right, so it’s not legal, but any other kind of modding that requires you to make things based off the game’s original files and distribute them wouldn’t be legal either.
Morally, it’s dicey as a modern voice actor contract would either have a clause about being unable to use the recordings to train voice synthesis, or charge more for the privilege, so the voice actors for Morrowind signed a right away that they didn’t intend to because their agents failed to realise it was something they could do or predict that it would ever become relevant. No one tricked anyone, but it’s not what would have been agreed to if everyone involved was clairvoyant.
While I appreciate the loophole in the EULA, I feel my stance is on something different. This is like fan art of Micky mouse. Disney doesn’t lose any money from me drawing micky, and I’m allowed to post it online. It only becomes a problem if i try to sell my art. Openmw isn’t making money off this and Bethesda wasn’t going to do it, so why should it matter if this is being done by ai or by a really skilled impersonator?
It’s not so much a loophole as they’d reasonably have expected mods that chopped up voice lines to make new sentences, and mods have been doing that for Bethesda games for years, sometimes with surprisingly effective results, but that’s obviously super time-consuming and not as good as someone just reading aloud, let alone actually acting. Generative AI can suddenly chop up voice lines to make newer ones way faster with next to no effort, and give comparable quality to the original voice actor reading lines aloud, even though it can’t do the acting part.
It’s no skin off Bethesda’s nose if people use generative AI to voice modded dialogue, but it could be a problem for the voice actors. Wes Johnson’s done voice work for mods before, so mods aren’t operating in a completely separate space to the voice actors who worked on the games. From a quick search, it doesn’t seem like he charged for any of the work he did for mods (one was specifically for a charity fundraiser), but it wouldn’t be immoral of him, or any other voice actor, to take paid commissions for mod dialogue. That’s not as viable if generative AI can compete.
Anyway, none of this is really relevant to OpenMW specifically - sound files are game content, and we don’t deal with game content
You’re basically applying abandonware rules, which means it remains morally questionable, but a shade of grey light enough to tolerate.