Hmm, they aren’t clear whether it’s fully voice-acted or whether he provided phonetic sounds for them to synthesize according to the text, but in either case, it’s not AI whatsoever.
Important to note that ESS Technologies (the company cited there) was literally a company who made synthesized speech for video games.
Electronic Speech Systems produced synthetic speech for, among other things, home computer systems like the Commodore 64. Within the hardware limitations of that time, ESS used Mozer’s technology, in software, to produce realistic-sounding voices that often became the boilerplate for the respective games.
The main announcer sounds like he is just phoning this in for the paycheck and stumbles over stuff like he can't believe he has to read this. Wow. AI is so authentic these days.
More seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if more games with announcers started replacing them with AI. In a lot of those games, it's easy to tune it out and not really pay attention to it. I'm not sure if someone casually playing would even realize it's AI. I'm curious how long it will take until a publisher tries to put AI voice-acting in a game where players would actually notice the dialogue sounding unnatural.
I think players are desensitised to unnatural dialogue. For example, to my Western ear lots of Asian games seem to have weird dialogue, no doubt due to poor translation. (Kojima is known to insist his dialogue be translated strictly and literally from the Japanese which explains, partially, why his games feel pretty strange. Plus Kojima is bonkers.)
I think tech like this makes way more sense for like random ass NPCs. Like the ones cluttering the background of a city or whatever. AI could really enhance them and make them interesting.
That’s a damn bummer. Game plays great, and with the microtransactions they’re gonna make bank. I’m curious where the decision came from to do this, rather than hiring voice talent.
Seems pretty neat I guess, but not for me… personally prefer to support actual voice actors making a living, putting passion into their work - not some random C suite or shareholder using AI to cut costs
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