Baldur's Gate 3 actors tear into AI voice cloning: 'That is stealing not just my job but my identity'

pcgamer.com:

Eurogamer took to the red carpet at the BAFTA awards to check in with the voice actors behind Baldur's Gate 3 and some of the other big games of 2023, and despite the buoyant mood at the show, they all had concerns and harsh criticism for AI voiceover tools⁠—especially unauthorized reproductions of their own voices.

BG3 narrator Amelia Tyler described coming across multiple instances of her already-iconic performance being replicated through AI, including for upsetting and unseemly purposes: «I went on to this stream because somebody gave me a heads up, and I went on and heard my own voice reading rape porn.

»That's the level of stuff we've had to deal with since this game came out and it's been horrible, honestly."

Tyler said that such use of her voice «is stealing not just my job but my identity,» and that while she loves videogame mod scenes, «to actually take my voice and use it to train something without my permission, I think that should be illegal.»

Raphael actor and best supporting performance winner Andrew Wincott quipped to Eurogamer that, while he appreciates the potential of doing 10 hours of work for 40 hours of output, he still expects to be paid for the full 40. Both Wincott and Samantha Béart, who played Karlach in BG3, expressed trepidation about potential contractual abuses of AI performance cloning, even in the face of SAG-AFTRA's recent contract.

Actors from other games, like Alan Wake 2's David Harewood and Final Fantasy 16's Ben Starr and Ralph Ineson, are similarly wary of the tech. Neil Newbon, who voiced Astarion in BG3, seemed more optimistic due to the sheer gulf in quality between AI copies and real actors' performances, hoping that good taste will win out: «I know a lot of people in the games industry that would like to work with an actor because of what we bring, the craft we bring.

»I don't think you can program craft. It's something beyond zeroes and ones, beyond the formula. It's quite magical."

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