Actor Neil Newbon, who voiced characters in Baldur's Gate 3 and Resident Evil Village, has strongly criticized the replacement of actors' work with generative AI.
Screw this AI in performance. In terms of the total cost of development, voice acting costs a penny. I don't think it's justified to deprive people of work. If you're not going to record lines at all, and just use AI to take someone's voice and manipulate it as you please, that's a problem.
He continued:
I've heard generative AI is terribly boring. I don't believe it, it breaks the immersion. People say it helps because it's supposedly "reactive." But I hear something that doesn't sound like a human voice in danger, in battle, or in a state of excitement—any emotion that the character should convey. It [the voice] doesn't feel real. No matter how good it sounds, there's something unreal about it—the "uncanny valley" effect. Frankly, I don't care about generative AI because it sounds disgusting.
Despite the criticism from the acting community, some studios continue to experiment with generative AI. It is not yet known whether the technology will be able to completely replace live voice acting in games. Perhaps not in the coming years.
