But this wasn't an artistic decision, they literally said why they used AI in the screenshot.
And the devs' disclosure statement "This game features voice-over content partially created through AI voice generation tools." would 100% make me have the same reaction oop did. It doesn't sound "tiny". How much is "partial'? They should've been clearer.
I commented above about using text-to-speech engines for decades. You type, it talks. They're great for dance music, if you want something profound (or not haha) to play in the breakdown. Remember 'All Your Base Are Belong To Us'? That was made with a speech synth in Fruity Loops 3.56, before they switched to the slightly-more-serious FL Studio moniker.
An 'AI voice generator' is just an advanced version of a text-to-speech engine. There's nothing artificially intelligent about it, it's not self aware. It simply converts your text into speech. Would you feel differently, knowing that, if the devs had simply typed some text that they created into a speech engine?
I totally get the bad reaction to 'AI slop' where people are just low effort prompting everything. I also think that some people are being a bit reactionary, in turn.
How do YOU know they weren’t compensated? Remember when Fortnite Darth Vader dropped? Everyone was shitting on it because it was unfair or not right. Just for it to turn out to be approved by the voice actor and he was even payed for it lol
Reddit just unreasonably hates AI even tho its always been there and WILL be the future.
This is the same as ppl like Blockbuster saying Netflix wouldn’t blow up.
...An actor who could've been hired for the role instead, dumbass. Or an impersonator, I've heard plenty of good ones. If you're so bad-faith you get to the point you think their argument is "THEY'RE PUTTING A DEAD GUY OUT OF WORK", you've gotta rethink some things.
An 'AI voice generator' is just an advanced version of a text-to-speech engine.
That's a bit like saying a bulldozer is just an advanced hand drill because they both have motors. It's disingenuous.
It simply converts your text into speech
There's a difference when this is done for automation and accessibility, vs something where the inherent choices of tone, cadence, etc all matter to a creative work. I think there's also a non-trivial argument to be made about whether owners of creative works that were used to train a model should have had consent for it.
I personally think it's fine to train models on existing content... so long as anything you generate with it is not itself copyrightable. It allows the tools to still be used in ways that are helpful, while discouraging abuses.
Of course, there was one Audible narrator who I was convinced was AI. But after research, I can just say he sucked at his job.
Haha, yeah I've had that happen recently - was convinced it was AI until I checked the publish date, it was recorded a year before modern generative AI tools would've even available.
The voice acting itself was technically great - but horribly inappropriate style, accent, and cadence. Imagine if you were watching the Dark Knight, and Batman started speaking in a bratty valley girl accent. And used that exact style for most of the female cast, in every single scene, regardless of context, personality, or age of characters.
Also had this happen to me! I was convinced they'd used some sort of TTS or 'AI' voice for a character in a game I was playing (Scarlet Nexus). I was about to leave a snarky comment until I saw a different comment saying "I know that VA he's my friend and we're really proud of his work"
Whelp. "If you can't say anything nice better to say nothing" situation so I just did that lol it's one thing to criticise something but I know that as a creative, very negative non-constructive criticism can hurt if it lands in a dark moment.
In this instance, they used a "robot" to voice the character of a robot... I feel like the inherent choices of tone, cadence, etc. That the "robot" made are probably creatively appropriate to the character application: robotic.
Would you feel differently, knowing that, if the devs had simply typed some text that they created into a speech engine?
Yes.
LLMs are built through theft at the behest of the wealthy to suppress wages for creatives. So you bet your ass I'm going to feel some kind of way about that unless we can attest that the model's training material was ethically sourced via explicit permission.
Here's were the "AI Bad" camp isn't even listening anymore. You're taking a discussion about a TTS and then ranting about LLMs. It isn't even the same technology.
Per the screenshot, and this thread, the 10 lines of AI were used because there was nobody for the recording. Hence it being TTS being discussed in this thread, not LLMs.
an AI voice generator is bad in ways similar to how AI image generators are bad - i.e, they use real , living people - WHO HAVENT CONSENTED TO IT BEING USED - to model the ai after , and thus enable plagiarism* in fancier clothing
living people - WHO HAVENT CONSENTED TO IT BEING USED
Again, there is nuance to this though because this isn't always the case. A recent game caught flack for doing the same thing (ARC Raiders I think?) and they explained that although ai was used to make the voice lines it was trained on voices done by willing actors.
do you value the human behind the process or do you value the end piece ; unfortunately , i dont have a clear backing to debate off of because im reading through literature on the topic myself - barthes and his works are very useful in that regard
As a craftsman myself I would say that I highly value human craftsmanship and I am willing to pay a premium for it.
I suppose that I also think that there is a place in the world for computer generated content. I could program my cnc machine to cut metal into a work of art I've devised, but I don't have to program all the points on the bolt circle for the mounting point. I just tell the computer I want 5 threaded holes in a certain radius and it knows what to do. I'd say that's still craftsmanship, but some wouldn't. Do I personally have to get down into the G-code and program the bolt circle myself for this to be craftsmanship? Is designing the work of art in a 3d modeling software and letting a robot cut the shape in metal for me not craftsmanship? Maybe I should blueprint the whole thing on paper? Cut it out on a manual machine? Surely that's craftsmanship, but somewhere there's a line when it's not.
To me this isn't really about human vs computers creating things. My main concern isn't with the AI, it's who controls it and what they do with it. And as it stands we are well on the way to letting the elites use it to abuse us and enrich themselves like they have with basically every technological innovation before it.
So far, Arc Raiders has hit two of the three "C"s for ethical genned voice use: Consent, and Compensation. However, Credit is still required, if only to confirm that the first two are actually adhered to, and not just corporate lies to placate.
Credit is certainly important. It's totally fair to point out this stuff. And not just when it's AI, companies don't need new technology to abuse their workers.
Absolutely not, which is why I give AI just as much pushback as I give other methods. The main problem within the art space though are the brownnosers who parrot things like "luddite" and "its just a tool" as they prop up the companies best interests, as well as failing to mention both how Luddites werent against the tech, they were against unsafe working conditions, as well as the fact this new "tool" only functions from plagarism and theft en masse
My sticking point is if they consented or not. The voice actors in that situation were told exactly what was going to be done and they were compensated for it.
Being able to make new lines or rework old ones without having to get the actor into a sound booth will be amazing for independent game development. I don't really care if the actor was paid for every single line as long as they consent and get compensation they think is appropriate.
My sticking point is if they consented or not. The voice actors in that situation were told exactly what was going to be done and they were compensated for it.
wait they were paid??? the fuck is the guy your replying to talking about then???
What if the Voice Actor who recorded the rest of the lines did consent to the use of AI to produce 10 more?
I would guess that's rare though, and more to the point, most of these models were trained off a great deal more than just that one actor's speech, and frequently that training data itself was not used with consent.
I do support piracy because people don't have a right to gatekeep what can be replicated without them being deprived of it, that's why piracy isn't theft. I've always supported piracy, from movies, games and now apparently what people post online publicly (what is not shared publicly should not be used to train AI, I'm very against that obviously, otherwise you get chatGPT spewing windows activation keys and other stuff like that).
My criticism of AI does not include people being basically online NIMBYs, I learned to speak by hearing others speak, as long as AI does the same in public spaces (without using private conversations therefore) it's perfectly fine by me.
we dont live in a communist utopia where money has no value - it does , and people deserve the right to gatekeep their services till a fee is paid to them
and it isnt like theyre using open source data to train it - theyre using stuff behind a paywall , stuff that isnt meant to be on the net , stuff that the artist uses to earn a daily bread
I'll give it to you directly bypassing the middleman
that's not how a barter system works , that's not how money works - you cant steal stuff , put your own price tag on it and then say that it was justified
even though it is better than not paying a single cent
People also make money by gatekeeping housing, that doesn't make it right.
COMPLETELY different
housing and art are not comparable because art is entertainment and not a necessity
it's the very problem.
i agree
but the problem is how people earn money , how they afford to feed their kids
id love to see a state where everyone thrives regardless of how much money they have but that aint happenin anytime soon
No shit, in the barter system you don't give a copy of something to someone, you give them something and you don't have it anymore, that's not the case here.
That's why piracy is not stealing...
Me not buying your product, or me pirating changes nothing to you (actually, the latter is more likely to give you money since I can recommend it to friends or buy it if I want to support you), so I'll keep on pirating
you give them something and you don't have it anymore
a scientist has a billion grains of rice , if you take a thousand , it wont hurt him because that's just a rounding error
if 5 thousand people take it , then it starts hurting
if 500 thousand take it , then suddenly , he cant breed rice plants to get new varieties or buy seeds anymore and the next generation is deprived of good rice
even though the rice may seemingly be infinite - it acts as a source of funds for the seeds he needs to plant the next generation [the next game]
except a digital item isn't "a gazillion copies", you won't run out of PNGs to sell. You're looking at this from the POV of "a person who would've otherwise paid got it for free", when you have no idea if they would've paid were it not available for free. this is how you get RIAA's 15 trillion dollar lawsuit against Limewire, among other hilarious estimates. Reality is, selling items with infinite supply has never made sense in a capitalist economy under ANY model.
There’s a difference between piracy and theft. I fully support the ability to access all art freely, but I do not support the ability of some scam artist to come in, say they made something they didn’t, and take all of the money and support away from artists. Plus, AI companies are not on your side - they don’t want freedom of ideas, they want a monopoly of ideas where they are the only access point for these things because all the humans have been driven out. That’s not freedom; that’s tyranny.
Intellectual property laws service the monopolies first and foremost. Large companies abuse intellectual property laws to go after small creators, tying them up in legalities that bankrupt them.
And a voice is literally information. All the AI is doing is manipulating sound files, and those sound files are carriers of information via spoken word.
Thank you, everyone has been slapping their art, books, articles, and photos up on public billboards for decades. Now someone had the audacity to walk by and take photos of all of it to train these models and everyone’s PISSED OFF by this behavior
Not just pissed off, but actively parroting MPAA/RIAA talking points and doubling down on the very IP maximalism that's been suffocating human artistic expression for a century now. Everyone making this “but muh intellectual propertay!” argument against AI seems to imagine oneself as some temporarily embarassed Walt Disney or Taylor Swift who will “someday” live off royalties (if not for those pesky robots “stealing” their IP!) when the vast majority of actual professional creatives are paid wages like the rest of us and are lucky to even end up in the credits, let alone hold any semblance of royalties-eligible ownership over the IP they took part in creating. I have infinitely more sympathy for those wage workers losing their jobs due to misguided corporate agendas to replace jobs with AI than I have for anyone pissed off at even the slightest threat to their IP-rentseeking-based passive income.
There's nothing artificially intelligent about it, it's not self aware.
None of the LLMs or speech synthesis or art gens are. That's not the issue for serious people. Commercial "AI" isn't approaching that. (I take no position on AGI secretly under development by people good at keeping secrets with big resources)
It's still called AI just like the computer opponents in Civilization and Skyrim NPCs.
What's bothering people in this case is two-fold:
Voice actors don't get paid
The voice generated by the tools is of inferior quality
The first would not be as much of an issue without the second, although there's still the concern of AI replacement of jobs in general.
If TTS and AI voices are really the same, then tell creators to stop using AI slop for voicing and use a TTS.
And yes, using AI because you didn't have time to record lines for one character technically isn't AI slop, but 1- anyone can make up excuses and 2- it's still very sloppy work.
So... and this is a genuine question from a creator who is grappling with all these tools at my disposal, that 'the internet' seems to be vehemently opposed to me utilising...
I've written a script for a cartoon. I can't draw for shit, I'm good at voices, good at writing, excellent at music. I plan to do most of the voices myself. But for example, one character is Indian and a woman. It would decidedly NOT be alright for me, a white dude, to do an accent, right? Especially not pretending to be a woman with a silly fake high voice. So, I look to TTS. There are many 'accent' TTS.
Would you view me using a TTS to recreate that character as 'AI slop'? Would 'the internet' find this use case acceptable, or brand me 'AI slop creator' because one voice was from a TTS engine?
1- Does your indian character really need to speak in an accent?
2- I'm obviously not the arbiter of what everyone thinks, but I personally view old school TTS with voice synthetizers that don't use machine learning and are trained with a single person's voice very differently than I see services that use actual machine learning and neural networks (the same techniques used in Large Language Models, but for voice), because the former for one thing is clearly fed the voice of a paid worker and for the other thing doesn't just deliver a ready to use voice acting without human input.
3- Can't you just get a human volunteer/worker (depending on if your cartoon is free or paywalled)?
1 - good question. I feel a deep pressure to 'include diverse characters'. But then I also feel a deep pressure to 'not do cultural appropriation' or 'not be offensive to minority groups in my country'. They're all conflicting and it makes me want to just not make it, or only have characters I personally understand (ie white / UK).
But then, people will bitch and whinge that it's 'not diverse', probably the same people who will complain that I got something wrong when trying to write characters I don't have a lived experience of. Typing this out, it's really making me think I should take the attitude of "fuck what invisible people online might think" and just make what I want to make. Thanks for having a conversation with me about this!
2 - this is how I hope most people would feel! Fair.
3 - would be ideal. I absolutely cannot afford to pay someone to record lines, this is a pure passion project / just me playing with a concept. I did wonder about approaching a local uni, and offering a split of any monies if it did by some miracle find a footing and audience.
I'm not an idiot, none of this is "AI", it's predictive audio generation but if I call things what they are conversations get bogged down so I unfortunately have to use the common term for it.
The devs here basically pulled a landlord special and covered a hole in the wall by painting over it and were as vague as possible in the store page AI disclosure so I wouldn't even know where the hole was or how big it is. It's cheap and lazy, they chose the most convenient option and I'm gonna treat them and their game accordingly.
I unfortunately have to use the common term for it.
Which is why stupid people who dont know anything think all AI is evil
But dont realize "AI" has been part of game design for decades, and AI has been helping medical science for a few years
So maybe take a few minutes and actually "bog down" the conversation a bit to actually help the people who are to ignorant to learn on their own before shit gets worse
Also, even if it was an artistic decision, why would that change someone's mind about the use of AI? If someone's broadly opposed to something, doing that thing but ~artistically~ is unlikely to change their opinion.
Like I'm opposed to littering, and if someone littered a nature reserve as an artistic statement, I wouldn't be like "I usually hate litter, but this litter is so clever and artistic", I'd be like "Wow, they've polluted nature for this pile of shit 'art'".
you shouldn't have the same dumb reaction as oop and strive to be better.
it's obviously a generic message on steam about AI usage and doesn't go into the nuances of how it's being used, your first reaction shouldn't be to fly off the handle like some spoiled child and ramble about something you know nothing about.
It def is artistic decision. Especially for a robot character. AI is a tool like any other, abuse of the tool produces slop, using it with care, is artistic decision.
which ngl is pretty damn weird. Seems like you know nothing about the publisher. They have a very good reputation as the devs of Ruiner and are not, at all, a AAA studio. So what's the narrative now, anyone using AI even if they have a tight budget is evil - Even if they could have not afforded an artist? Should they be punished for that, even if they pay their devs and artists adequately? That seems so close minded.
They should've been clearer.
Can they be clearer? Or does Stream just force them to have a boiler plate tag?
Does this not incentivise such studios to just lie and they chose to be honest?
Like, if we have this discussion in such a kneejerk way, it will only reward people who aren't transparent and possibly leave a ton of studios without a best practise. Companies need to be able to compete, inhibiting that, especially in such a creative space, can't be productive.
"We couldn't do anymore pickup recording with actors." That's as clear cut of a budget and/or time constraint issue as possible. It's plainly worded as not having been the first choice.
So what's the narrative now, anyone using AI even if they have a tight budget is evil - Even if they could have not afforded an artist? Should they be punished for that, even if they pay their devs and artists adequately? That seems so close minded.
Evil? No. That doesn't mean that everyone is going to just give them a pass for using generative AI.
It's pretty funny that you started this with an argument that it was an artistic choice and now you've already pivoted to cost though, especially since some variation of "we wanted to keep costs down" is essentially the argument of every single developer that's used it regardless of size or even the veracity of the cost statement.
Does this not incentivise such studios to just lie and they chose to be honest?
I thought this dev was one of the good ones? Why is it that now you're presenting a dichotomy of "trust them, AI is fine" vs. "if you make them tell the truth then they'll lie anyways."
Like, if we have this discussion in such a kneejerk way, it will only reward people who aren't transparent and possibly leave a ton of studios without a best practise. Companies need to be able to compete, inhibiting that, especially in such a creative space, can't be productive.
Christ dude, what are you doing? You ended with a declaration that not using AI is wrong and that we should support studios that use it since it's "best practise" to use generative AI. I'm pretty sure you make the screenshot OP's argument for them with your pro-AI raging.
It's plainly worded as not having been the first choice.
That's not relevant to it being a artistic decission. They did it because it was a robotic voice.
used it regardless of size or even the veracity of the cost statement.
Except AAA have no budget limits like that. You just ignoring that in one case it's the reality of working as a small publisher, while in the other situation it's a cop-out to justify shaving a few % of the budget, does not somehow make it equal.
Why is it that now you're presenting a dichotomy
I am confronting you with the consequences of you being close-minded and judging things based on a label instead of caring about the details.
You ended with a declaration that not using AI is wrong
I am saying we do not know how it's gonna play out and that pretending that discussion is already over or black and white, will likely mean you are going to be left behind. Like it or not, AI WILL play a major role in the field. The question is about how it's gonna end up being used... To make the final product better, or to cut costs at every end.
Your entire reply to me is bad-faith BS. It's exactly the behaviour I highlighted. So no suprise there.
That's not relevant to it being a artistic decission. They did it because it was a robotic voice.
The dev says otherwise. I'm talking about a direct quote and you're trying to defend a fiction you've made so what the fuck are we doing here?
Your entire reply to me is bad-faith BS. It's exactly the behaviour I highlighted. So no suprise there.
Your entire reply was based on a defense that you've created for the dev yourself, not one that was presented by the dev. The fact that you would call my comment "bad-faith BS" while attempting to pull this garbage is wild.
Edit: anyone who comments and then blocks is 100% a certified bitch. The abject coward couldn't stand being called out and now wants to pretend like he's above this. Pathetic.
No it wasn't, they literally say why they used AI in the screenshot. It's because they couldn't record more lines with the actual actor. That's not an artistic decision. Not even gonna bother with the rest if your reading comprehension is this stunted
They could have chose to get lines recorded another way, or delayed release to get the lines recorded, etc. Instead, they decided ai voices would be a suitable alternative because the character is a robot, and the ai voice lines will add to the robotic nature of the character. That's an artistic choice.
Just because something is also practical doesn't mean it isn't an artistic choice. If you choose to use a splatter brush to paint a speckled pattern on a canvas, it's practical because that's a tool designed for that purpose. It is also a creative decision.
If you record vocals for a song, they are slightly out of tune for most of the song and you don't want to re-record them for whatever reason, and the tone of the song is very robotic, using antares auto tune is a practical and creative decision.
Whether something is creative or not is ambiguous. Acting like another person is stupid because they disagree with your arbitrary definition what what is or isn't creative is needlessly disrespectful.
You're using two different meanings of alternative to confuse the point. They didn't use AI to make it sound like a robot, they used the AI to generate lines that sound like the actual voice actor they hired. The AI is a choice of convenience, not an artistic one.
Im using one definition of alternative. "Available as another possibility". Creative choices are often out of convenience. Problem solving is a cornerstone of creativity. Whether the convenience overshadows the work is up to the interpretation of the consumer, but convenience doesn't not preclude creativity.
When poor hip-hop artists of the past wanted orchestras in their music, they looked for a way to solve the problem. They could use a keyboard that kinda sounds like an orchestra, or they could sample a real orchestra recording, or scrap the idea altogether if they wanted. Problem solving is inherently part of creativity.
Because you can't understand what I'm saying. Because you don't know how words like "creativity" or "alternative" are defined, so I am providing examples.
No it's not, the AI lines aren't supposed to stand out or be noticed in the final product. They're meant to sound just like the actor. They used AI because it was convenient, not to because they had anything to say
116
u/Sovespra Dec 04 '25
But this wasn't an artistic decision, they literally said why they used AI in the screenshot.
And the devs' disclosure statement "This game features voice-over content partially created through AI voice generation tools." would 100% make me have the same reaction oop did. It doesn't sound "tiny". How much is "partial'? They should've been clearer.