You are right. Now, should we then condone any kind because we condone one? It might be hypocritical to condone one and not the other. But I prefer to chose my fights instead of going for none.

don’t feed the troll they say…

TTS has existed for decades, machine learning for less than 20 years, genAI as we know it for less than 5.

Those 3 things are not the same thing. Yes the genAI they used can be included as a TTS because it is one. But only in function.

You are playing on words here. Most people know TTS as a crappy old thing, here this is something way more advanced.

Even if it was the same thing to begin with. I wouldn’t be like a company using a simple TTS capable of recreating the voice of a voice actor I like without paying them the same as if the company hired them.

First, please stay civil. I didn’t insult you. Don’t insult me.

Secondly I mark the difference between the accessibility feature of voice changer and the voice lines that could have been 100% recorded by a professional voice actor to begin with.

Because in the second case, this is just cost-cutting in order to maximise profit on the back of voice actors imho.

Marketing this as “text-to-speech” is oversimplyfying at best, dishonest at worst. People need to work, we can’t blame the voice actors. But in the end they still are working against themselves/their peers by allowing corporations/studios to copy their unique features to prevent working with them in the future.

Marketing this as “text-to-speech” is oversimplyfying at best, dishonest at worst imho. People need to work, we can’t blame the voice actors. But in the end they still are working against themselves/their peers.

I don’t know the details. And I agree that if every line generated with their voice is paid (at least partially) I don’t see as big of a problem as I stated.

But call me cynical: I don’t think they were paid for generated voice lines. I would gladly be corrected on this matter though.

It seems to me you are playing with words. Pilaging all internet resources to create and profit on genAI isn’t unethical to you?

Independent artists have found evidence that their work has been scraped to train most of big genAI tools for years now. That’s A-OK for you?

To follow your analogy:

• “The tractor isn’t made off of other people living wage” is what I was starting to answer but… it does a bit, so you are right in a sense. Previously, people where hired to plow the field I guess. And I don’t see this as big of a problem as genAI. But this subject touches more on mass production and capitalism.

• I would like to intentionally bend your analogy by stating that it’s not inherently true: if anybody could access a technology that helps them by magically destroying lives in another country far away, would you say the same thing? “It would be silly to ignore it as it makes things easier for me” seems quite short-sighted to me.

Sorry if I sounded angry or something. My goal is to debate around this subject I feel passionate about. I’m not really sure I would call all of this “being upfront” but that may be another subject.

I’m not an English native, so my words could be harsher that it should. Sorry again.

And thank you for answering and participating about the whole thing. No hard feelings I hope!

I understand that this would be costly. But imho this isn’t a good reason. There is imo only two ethic ways to solve this kind of problem:

• Understand that the goal is too hard to handle. Abandon the voice acting on the ping system.
• Put the means, even if this is costly*

*: As I said, Embark is a big company, they made millions of dollars. They can afford it. It is absurd to me to allow such a big structure to “cut costs” by removing the human factors.

Thank you for the sourced answer.

First of all, I’m not the author of the video. I’m only a concerned customer/fan.

Secondly, I am already boycotting Windows for those kind of reason. And I have been a Linux user for the better part of the last 10 years. You are right, we should fight this kind of stance. But this is a different beast imho.

Now to answer: I will copy/paste most of my answer to kate above.

Stealing might be a strong word, I agree. But because of this policy, Embark won’t need another recording session out of these actors. Designing the project to never pay the actors that could have worked with them again.

I find this really cynical. Because:

Embark has made millions, if not more on this game. Don’t tell me they HAD to use genAI instead of paying those voice actors for reshoot to begin with.

To back this term (“stealing”). I consider that the genAI technology as a whole has been built on the stolen work of the whole world. ChatGPT has been built upon thousands of Github projects without their consent, I suppose Sora, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc have been made in the same way. Training data has been stolen.

Even though it’s a bit far-stretched, using this kind of technology to remove any future human collaboration is stealing to me.

• Stealing (copying) their voice (in the Little Mermaid way)
• Stealing their money (make profit with their unique trait in the future)
• Stealing the work of thousand if not million of people around the world through the genAI technology

I personally do understand how genAI work. But thank you for clarifying what is usually a black box for most people. Let me phrase in detail what my understanding is. And feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

What Embark did is to train a specific model on a specific voice. I agree.

But the base of this model is to be capable of understanding how any voice works in order to copy how a specific voice work. In other words. This means that the technology/model has first been built using thousands of recordings to “understand” how human voice works. And then there has been a last layer to copy a specific voice.

I am simplifying of course. But I want to express how much I am disagreeing with the “they only used one specific voice”. Technology isn’t magic, we as a society don’t understand how to make a program that can copy a single voice to make it say anything perfectly.

We can use an amalgam of thousands of them to build a neural network (what some call AI, it is a broad term often used to describe Machine Learning) to statistically mimic what a human voice is. And then feed it a single voice to mimic.

Sorry for the long response.

I agree, this game has an awesome tech team making a clear counter-argument to UE5 haters (I hate UE5, they used very well imho). The graphism are cool and the art is really a work of art! I love the world design, lore, color grading, design-language, weapon design, etc.

The voice acting got through what I consider my keen 6th sense of AI-detection (which scares me tbh). But this is something that I cannot let go, I don’t want to. Even though everything else is (for a multiplayer game) top-notch imo.

What’s the boundary if we let them do this to one aspect of the game then? What amount of AI slop are we going to accept in the future if we allow corporations to AI-creep into everything?

I want to vote with my wallet and with my voice to support what I think isn’t the right direction.

Even though the voice actors signed the contract: I, as a customer/fan, don’t want workers signing off their ability to work more. These voice actors won’t ever work again with Embark now, Embark don’t need another recording session from them. Ok, actors waved that opportunity away willingly. But I don’t want the whole industry to become like this.

It’s not because the genAI trend isn’t going away that we aren’t allowed to adapt to it. My adaptation is to fight for an AI-free label.

PS: On another front, Embark has made millions, if not more on this game. Don’t tell me they HAD to use genAI instead of paying those voice actors for reshoot to begin with.

I love the dev behind ARC Raiders. I hate the management team that forced AI into the project (I can’t prove this claim, call that a hunch)

Stealing might be a strong word, I agree. But because of this policy, Embark won’t need another recording session out of these actors. Designing the project to never pay the actors that could have worked with them again.

To back this term (“stealing”). I consider that the genAI technology as a whole has been built on the stolen work of the whole world. ChatGPT has been built upon thousands of Github projects without their consent, I suppose Sora, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc have been made in the same way. Training data has been stolen.

Even though it’s a bit far-stretched, using this kind of technology to remove any future human collaboration is stealing to me.

• Stealing (copying) their voice (in the Little Mermaid way)
• Stealing their money (make profit with their unique trait in the future)
• Stealing the work of thousand if not million of people around the world through the genAI technology

Downwell

On explose d’abord ! Et on parle… après ! — Ziggs, League of Legends, French Voice