The use of AI in voice acting has been a hot topic in the video game industry as of late, with the ongoing SAG-AFTRA video game strikes having protections against unauthorized AI replications of actors’ performances as one of its main demands. It’s not just kids on TikTok making Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants sing Chappell Roan; giant companies are looking into ways to avoid using voice actors. This was seen with the recently leaked Sony demo of Aloy from the Horizon series in the most crappy-looking Project Milo demo ever seen.
And while the Aloy demo (and 99% of AI slop out there) looked and sounded like crap, it sets a terrible precedent, with Aloy actress Ashly Burch (whose performance data wasn’t used for the demo) saying she feels worried about “game performance as an art form.” And Burch is hardly the only voice actor to express these concerns. Speaking to Edge Magazine, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Resident Evil voice actor Neil Newbon expressed similar concerns, saying, “AI will have deep ramifications across all industries if not ethically regulated by people.”
AI use is still in its relatively early days, so it’s still the wild west in many ways without proper regulations, and given that generative AI programs are built off the back of actual people’s work, it’s in dire need of some. Of course, most of the results turn out to be as janky and awful as the Aloy demo, and it’s clear art from actual people is far more likely to resonate with the public. Something Newbon echoes, saying, “As an artist, I believe in experiencing life and art through human expression, not software… AI, after all, is built on the work originally created by humans, and there is a fundamental difference between the two.”
The irony of the AI Aloy demo was not lost on Horizon fans, as they commented that “The entire game is a warning against this kind of nonsense.”
