Chef6652

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.

Not sure about "not aiming for millions".

The quality of it is not perfect to me. And you should really watch the video. There are blatant problems in the clips the author shows.

Finally, if you cannot afford something in the first place because of budget issues, I would prefer not including it than including it by using a controversial technology.

PS: And maybe after the facts hire voice actors to enhance your game with all the voice lines you can now pay for. I hate this "break first, say sorry after" mindset tbh

First I am not talking about any deceipt. Though I think it wasn't clear enough IMHO, but they didn't have to put it upfront. Thus why I am advocating in some sort of label or something idk.

Second I didn't talk about voice chat but voice lines. Specifically named character voice line. Which isn't the same thing.

The first is for player accessibility, the second is just something you could make with professional voice actors. No need for genAI.

Yes, exactly. What's your point?

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.

I talked about the usage of Machine Learning for the ARCs behavior in the original post. I'm cool with that. But I don't call this genAI. The machine learning technology is fine, the pillaging of resources to create what they call "genAI" is not fine to me.

Now I do agree that, at least for me, if the voice actors are paid for each line generated: there is no problem. I'm willing to hear that in this case it is only for the quicker pipeline. But maybe I am the cynical one: I'm convinced that it is not the case, the actors were paid for the recording sessions, not the subsequent generated lines. I would be delighted to hear otherwise from a good source.

I agree that the fondamental problem is how AI is destroying business and ultimately people.

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!

With a company this big, couldn't they have put the means into it to hire humans instead of using genAI? I understand why they did it. I don't condone it.

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)