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) to statistically mimic what a human voice is. And then feed it a single voice to mimic.
Sorry for the long response.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
I have played enough games that have lasted enough time to know that it’s not uncommon to be unable to get a voice actor to come back for many reasons up to and including death or retirement.
For them to be able to have a consistent voice throughout without having to rely on that in the voice, actor only has to do a one-time gig get paid in the potentially earn a small annual stipend from the project depending on their contract.
Genai for voices is really really good in that case. You can sell the use of your voice to train a model for a small lump sum with a yearly licensing fee or a large up front sum.
Easier in a more reliable paycheck for the voice actor. As long as the contract is fair and compensation is done correctly and the licensing is on a strictly project by project basis. So no using that trained AI from multiple projects.
Like this is probably the single best example of using genai that we can really hope for. It could be a slight bit better. Sure, but this is already leaps and bounds ahead of anything else.
Bespoke case by case trained AI with contractual agreements for payment in licensing.