Comment on ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Used AI For A Dead Voice Actor’s Performance, With Permission
Hildegarde@lemmy.world 11 months agoThe actor agreed to voice the character in the base game. As far as I’m aware there is no evidence of a soured relationship with the developers, no reason to deduce he would have refused to continue voicing the character were he still alive.
It would be unethical to use a dead actor’s voice in a way they would have a good reason to object to if they could, but this doesn’t seem to be the case here.
echo64@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I disagree with this entirely. You can not say"well they worked with them in the past so they must have been totally okay with an ai resurrection post death"
Hildegarde@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s not what I’m saying at all.
This is not an AI resurrection.
This is an advanced voice changer.
They are hiring another actor to play the character, and then using a voice changer to make the new actor sound like the previous one. Were it not for the permission of the family, they would have re-cast the part, and re-recorded all of Reczek’s lines from the base game to be consistent with the re-casting. The decision is between scrubbing his previous work, or using a voice changer.
In 2016 Disney released Rogue One, a film which featured a digital recreation of Peter Cushing, who had been dead for 22 years prior to the film’s release. Do you consider that more or less unethical than Miłogost Reczek’s voice being redone in the Cyberpunk DLC?
echo64@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I reject your statement about it not being ai resurrection, it absolutely is. 100%.
It’s the same exact problem.
Hildegarde@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I reject your assumption that he is against this. So many people have spent their lives creating art in a vein attempt to be remembered beyond their own lifetime. You are disrespecting the dead by assuming, without evidence, that he must have been against this, simply because you find it distasteful.
Peter Cushing died in 1994. He died well before any of this technology was possible. He couldn’t possibly foresee the advances of technology in the two decades beyond his death. Cushing couldn’t make his opinion on this subject known during his life because this technology wasn’t even close to existing. However, Reczek could.
Reczek died in 2021. Technology to re-create dead actors was around for many years of his life. This was a well known fact, and a matter of public debate. Discussions on the ethics of this have been going for years before his death. He had every reasonable opportunity to make an informed opinion on this subject, and make that view known.
I have found no evidence that Reczek objected to this sort of thing. I have seen no evidence that the family or the studio are violating any stated or implied objection, nor are they doing this in a disrespectful way.