Quite quickly in the video Burch shared to TikTok, she explained that developer Guerilla had contacted her to claim that the “demo didn’t reflect anything that was actively in development”, and importantly didn’t use any of her vocal or facial performance. Even with that, Burch did still say she feels “worried”, not about “Guerrilla specifically, or Horizon, or my performance, or my career specifically, even. I feel worried about this art form. Game performance as an art form.”
As Burch points out, The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) is still currently on strike, specifically because of concerns over AI being used to replace actors in the game development process, and that they’re asking for protections from its usage. This includes very reasonable things like requiring consent before making an AI version of the actor in question, fair compensation, and to be informed of how the AI dub is being used.
For Burch, her concern is a video like this coming out that is based on someone’s performance, and “the possibility that if we lose this fight, that person would have no recourse. They wouldn’t have any protections, any way to fight back. And that possibility… it makes me so sad. It hurts my heart. It scares me.”
Feels like scabbing to leak this while there’s a strike on.
Okay but imagine an RPG like Skyrim that instead of just selecting choices you actually talked to the NPCs and they spoke back to you? Because that’s where this is headed and it sounds fucking awesome.
That’s fine, they actor just needs to be compensated for it. Right now they’re trying to argue that you have them your voice, tough titties get out they’ll use it how they want. I think there should be a completely separate payment system if they want to train on their voice too.
The thing is why would it ultimately need to clone an actual person rather than use a prompt to describe the type of voice followed by iterating until you like a fully synthetic voice at which point there is nobody to pay
Why? Because people who work in the industry want to keep getting paid to play pretend.
Absolutely.
Skyrims already been modded to do that with Mantella.
Wow crazy!
Then the “organic” marketing program therein is working precisely as planned, citizen.
edit: Up/Downboat doesn’t matter — other than you in doing so, consider the ineffable truth of the statement above, even for a moment.
The phrasing of the title alone is enough of a whiff of marketing polish that the rest of the “article” carries that stink, and mentally handwaving its intent is naive, doing no one but them any favors.
God forbid people enjoy things in life.
Neither are mutually exclusive, my melodramatic friend.
Honest question. Why does the whole internet seem to be coalescing around the relatively small number of artists who might lose work over AI when there’s probably millions of people, if not more, who stand to lose their jobs in other sectors? AI powered voices could add a lot to a game, it could be great having completely dynamic speech.
It’s because of SAG-AFTRA. When they do something you hear about it. Also they basically come packaged with the most charismatic people around being the union for actors and performers and all.
Ignoring whether or not AI is able to deliver the same quality as humans, it boils down to that capitalism views human beings as a unit of work. So many of those units of work are necessary to achieve a product. AI is supposed to cost less than humans to produce the same amount of work.
Humans, however, aren’t just a simple measurement of what they can put out. Your worth isn’t tied to your productivity, or the amount of capital you have. Those factors might affect your total worth, but capitalism would have you believe that these are the only metrics that matter. Creative activity has been a staple of humanity throughout history, and it’s now a job where you can produce something that has some semblance of soul attached to it.
So when it comes to replacing artists with AI, there’s the offense that companies are trying to stifle what artists can get work by replacing them with versions that are mimicry, at best. I’ve seen fantastic works of AI art, but every single instance of it used by companies is replacing a creative human job for the sake of saving costs.
But AI doesn’t do a good job at most things. It has a terrible record of answering questions accurately, self-driving technology isn’t yet to the point where it’s been deemed safe, and we don’t have robots at the point where they can replace a human doing something as simple as stocking shelves. But what it can do, really well, is imitate art, whether it’s drawing, or vocal performances, or to an extent physical performances. People are worried about artists because those are the jobs affected right now. But the minute those other jobs are able to be automated away in a cost-effective manner, you’ll see people pissed about that, too.
