Stellaris gets a DLC about AI that features AI-created voices, director insists it's 'ethical' and 'we're pretty good at exploring dystopian sci-fi and don't want to end up there ourselves'
Stellaris launched in 2016, since when it has followed the usual Paradox post-launch cycle of regular tweaking accompanied by substantial paid-for DLC expansions. The latest is The Machine Age and focuses on «synthetic ascension» and the promise of eternal life among the stars, adding various new elements to the machine side of the game alongside a synth space queen that says she's going to get us all there.
The DLC's store page spells all of this out then, right at the end, drops this disclaimer:
«We employ generative AI technologies during the creation of some assets. Typically this involves the ideation of content and visual reference material. These elements represent a minor component of the overall development. AI has been used to generate voices for an AI antagonist and a player advisor.»
Well well well, say some Stellaris players, doth mine eyes deceive me? The use of AI creation tools in an expansion about AI consciousness taking over the galaxy? In particular, the use of AI to generate in-game voices raised a few eyebrows.
It's a fair cop, says the game's director, before going on to explain how and why the team has been using AI to help with the production of the Machine Age. Stephen ‘Eladrin’ Muray was addressing comments piecemeal in Steam discussions before taking to the game's subreddit (spotted by RPS) to offer further reassurance to players.
«The AI voice generation tools we use on Stellaris ensure that the voice actors that signed up and built the models receive royalties for every line we create,» says Muray. «Ethical use of AI technology is very important to us—we're pretty good at exploring dystopian sci-fi and don't want to end up there ourselves.»
Muray promises the devs will pull together a wider post on how it uses AI in a couple of weeks, but adds «we didn't use it for concept art in The Machine Age» because there are «a couple of awesome concept artists on staff for that.» There are «a couple of AI generated pieces on the visdev
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