Baldur's Gate 3 Karlach actor says CEOs "just want to save money" with AI: "It'll destroy their reputation, their company, everything"
Baldur's Gate 3 Karlach actor says CEOs "just want to save money" with AI: "It'll destroy their reputation, their company, everything"
"Hey, let's go eat the rich, soldier!"
-Karlach from my daydreams
AI could have some pretty cool uses as an enhancement to voice actors. Imagine all of the NPCs in an RPG being able to say the customized name of your character aloud instead of everyone using a title or nickname that you were assigned. It's a real shame that we have to use everything for evil instead.
That requires creativity. CEOs don't have that trait.
I've seen lover's lab. I know what kind of things NPCs will be forced to call the player.
But it would also be tempting to name a character Jugemu Jugemu Go-Kō-no-Surikire Kaijari-suigyo no Suigyō-matsu Unrai-matsu Fūrai-matsu Kū-Neru Tokoro ni Sumu Tokoro Yaburakōji no Burakōji Paipo Paipo Paipo no Shūringan Shūringan no Gūrindai Gūrindai no Ponpokopii no Ponpokonā no Chōkyūmei no Chōsuke.
Exactly. I think there are legitimate usages for this technology (eg voices for dynamic content, or when the original voice actor is dead or not available to voice again his/her characters). But everything should be done with the consent of the voice actors, and not in an attempt to replace the work that could be done by a voice actor in the first place.
It probably won’t happen, since money leads the way :/.
"eXtRaCt VaLuE!!1"
ruins everything
"wHeRe MoNeY gO@!?"
Rinse, repeat, etc.
If anyone here is playing KC:D2, the actor for Hans Capon (Luke Dale) made a mini-docu on the threat of AI to voice acting. I thought it was well edited and presented the problem in a very digestible way for those who know little about AI, so here it is for anyone interested: https://youtu.be/R55QzK8Hles
I am playing that, and I don't know if the story always goes this way, or if I just suck so bad at speech craft and the game changed based on my dialogue failures, but Hans and Henry hate each other now.
The problem is the way they're pushing the tools as magic lamps, and shoving them down everyone's throats.
AI is a really neat tool that got dragged into an incredibly toxic system that enshittified it. Not a useful tool to help development, no, skip straight to replacing employees even if it doesn’t freaking work.
I feel the same way about cryptocurrency, but with scams instead of jobs.
Just a reminder you can say fucking here. Fucking fuck shit you can, and holy fucking dogshit does that cunt fucking AI bullshit not even fucking work to replace a fucking intern, let alone a full ass engineer.
TikTok, Twitch, Youtube, etc etc did a number on people, training them to self censor like that.
It’s not the tool that’s the problem. It’s the capitalists controlling it.
The luddites didn’t oppose technology just for the sake of it. They opposed the use of it to displace workers. And there is absolutely a role for AI in all this that doesn’t involve anyone losing their jobs, if we can change who is in control of it.
Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing what can be done with the tech to make each person’s experience unique, with bespoke quests and dialogue. Maybe one day playing a game like Skyrim for 10 years doesn’t have to mean playing the same quests over and over. It’ll be cool comparing how our playthroughs differ from each other, as the AI changes the game to suit each person.
seeing what can be done with the tech to make each person’s experience unique, with bespoke quests and dialogue.
That being possible would be fundamentally a level up from what they are now. I've read a paper on this someone linked in a Lemmy thread a year or so ago.
Maybe one day playing a game like Skyrim for 10 years doesn’t have to mean playing the same quests over and over.
I think a more manual approach would work, of a world model like Crusader Kings has, with traits and ties and opinions and random events of NPCs between each other and towards the player, and that AI being used simply to rephrase and slightly adjust descriptions and sequences of events - then maybe.
But consider how many NPCs that means and how many others they meet in their simulated lives, and how hard it would be to debug a story line to ensure that it's always playable.
An LLM is not, strictly speaking, necessary here, and if used, doesn't make it easier.
No need to discuss it in future tense. There’s already mods that incorporate AI into Skyrim NPC’s. It’s impressive as hell.
I understand where a lot of the opposition to AI comes from. I get it. But when you’re so deep in the opposition that you’re saying it’ll never do thing that it’s already doing, you’re obviously just pushing an agenda without facts backing it up.
This is like arguing calculators sully math, because it should be done with an abacus.
I had a thought earlier in the bathroom about AI. It's like building a fancy indoor toilet when you don't have plumbing.
If people's basic needs were met, housing food health care all that, then it wouldn't really matter as much if people want to fuck around with AI. People who do things for passion could still do so.
But we live in a capitalist hell, this AI stuff will primarily benefit the ownership class while everyone else suffers.
I don't need a fancy toilet. I need clean running water.
The lifeless performances will come through in the end product. Wish them nothing but the worst.
If the working class doesn't have work, the working class doesn't have the money to buy the shit the CEOs have their companies put out, which will have the CEOs lose money.
But CEOs don't think that far ahead. Because their bean counting education didn't teach that.
I'm about half way through Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant, a book about the Luddites, and one of the things he's emphasised quite a lot is the complaints of people at the time about the lower quality of automated textiles compared to artisan-made ones.
Good point, I am checking myself periodically: have I become a luddite?
Well, we improved machines. We are not going to make the "AI" understand what a finger is and how many of them humans have
You should be a Luddite because they were right. My point wasn't that we should embrace AI (trust me, I'm one of its most dedicated haters), but that just because technology produces lower quality goods doesn't mean it won't catch on. It's going to take more than jeering mockery to stop capitalist embracing something that lets them deskill workers.
I want to agree with Beart but...
SAG et al have already more or less abandoned voice actors. In the very near future it won't matter if actors agree to work for these companies because they won't NEED those actors. They'll have training data or they'll pay randos off the street to generate some training data that they then heavily tweak to sound like Ashley Burch and so forth.
And before people pretend that consumers won't stand for that: Anyone with any knowledge of scene composition or lighting clowns on Netflix et al near constnatly. Guess what the super popular movies that everyone watches are? Because, yeah, there will still be works of art like a Blade Runner or even an Anora (the plot was shite but the cinematography was peak). They'll pale in comparison to people pretending they aren't going to watch Happy Gilmore 2.
And same with VA. People will claim they are opposed and it is horrible and complete trash compared to a human... and they'll still buy the games until having "human" voice acting is the exception and only for "arthouse" games.
SAG et al have already more or less abandoned voice actors.
As one who has a spouse who is a member, yup. I think that it's elitism sabotaging the solidarity. Silver screen actors want to see themselves as better than voice/video game actors so, instead of pushing for massive membership drives and organizing an industry that desperately needs it, they sell them down the river with contracts with AI companies. It's a bit infuriating. SAG has the resources to destroy non-union acting in video games but seldom shows any signs of being inclined to stand by they colleagues.
Happy Gilmore 2.
WTF? Why is this a thing?
Adam needs money I guess.
I think Béart is a good voice actor but I don't think that gives her special insight into the future of AI development. On the contrary, those people who would lose both money and meaning if a certain task is done well by a machine will be biased towards underestimating the probability that that task will be done well by a machine in the near future.
I guess it's about how you see quality. There are many products that are mass produced but if something is handmade, people see value in it to this day.
When or if AI will reach the point you describe... there will be still something special behind a performance done by a living flesh and blood person.
AI may have its place, but I don't think it should be the be all end all
I think that even in the scenario where AI is great at voice acting, there will be human voice actors left in the same way that there are people who perform live music left - a tiny number of superstars (new AIs will be trained on their performances), a few talented but obscure professionals who manage to make a relatively meager a living, and some hobbyists who do it for fun. There might even be more human voice actors than there are now simply because of population growth (or rather because of the growth of the population well-off enough to worry about that sort of thing). However, what Béart seems to be saying is that there won't be excellent AI voice acting, not that at least some human voice actors will have jobs despite the AI, and I don't think she's particularly qualified to make that prediction.
(I admit that I am baffled by the fact that people think AI won't be able to do something at all simply because AI isn't particularly good at doing it right now. Why are these people ignoring the extremely rapid rate of progress of AI?)
Good point. Kinda like the animators at animation studios that refused to move to the computer for their work, where are they all now? As technology progresses, people eother adapt or get left behind.
I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to those guys, at least because an older relative of mine was a skilled mechanical engineer who simply could not make the transition from pencil-and-paper drafting to CAD software despite trying very hard. He had the common "old people have difficulty using computers" problem despite actually having a great deal of interest in the new technology.
With that said, he was out of a job whether or not he deserved that.
Well yeah, AI is a tool for the wealthy to remove economic opportunities from the working class.
Now get back in the mine, slave.
AI is no where good enough for that. But these rich fucks want their customers to accept shitty quality and to force artists and developers to accept shitty pay so that they can keep more for themselves. Hence, they are so obsessed with AI.
Knowing some of these higher ups myself, I‘m pretty sure most of them cannot tell great quality from garbage and do not care about good products. It’s only ever about the short term numbers.
Sorry to be the one to inform you but it's already happening. Many places are turning to AI art to avoid paying artists.
AI is just an excuse to get a bigger piece of the pie.
Can't reach perfection without iteration.
Jokes on them. If they replace everyone's job with AI there will be a whole lot of unemployed people with nothing better to do other than build guillotines.
their content will suck too
I yearn for the mines.
ROCK AND STONE!