cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40224994
I just found out that Embark used genAI to replace recalling it’s voice actors. And I am devastated. It was my GOTY and now I’m boycotting it. To the point that I decided to be vocal about it.
I don’t want any AI (not talking about machine learning for the way the Arcs move, I’m talking about the voice actors being replaced) in the work of art that I think are the video games I play.
To game developers: Stop using AI in your video games!
Je viens de découvrir que Embark a utilisé de l’IA générative pour remplacer ses acteurs. Et franchement je suis tellement déçu. C’était clairement mon GOTY, et maintenant je me retrouve à boycotter tout ça, au point de carrément en faire des posts pour toucher le plus de monde possible.
Je ne veux aucune IA (et attention, je ne parle pas du machine learning utilisé pour les déplacements des Arcs) dans les oeuvres d’art que je consomme.
Aux développeurs: Arrêtez d’utiliser de l’IA dans les jeux vidéos !
the voice actors were paid to create the text-to-speech system, yes. that was why they were hired in the first place.
Marketing this as “text-to-speech” is oversimplyfying at best, dishonest at worst imho. People need to work, we can’t blame the voice actors. But in the end they still are working against themselves/their peers.
it is literally a text-to-speech system. saying otherwise is just ignorant.
TTS has existed for decades, machine learning for less than 20 years, genAI as we know it for less than 5.
Those 3 things are not the same thing. Yes the genAI they used can be included as a TTS because it is one. But only in function.
You are playing on words here. Most people know TTS as a crappy old thing, here this is something way more advanced.
Even if it was the same thing to begin with. I wouldn’t be like a company using a simple TTS capable of recreating the voice of a voice actor I like without paying them the same as if the company hired them.
you don’t have to like it. just don’t misrepresent what’s going on because you don’t have a good argument against it. it’s not your opinion that’s getting all your comments downvoted, it’s the lying and moralizing.
But are they also getting paid after the fact? Let’s say $50 any time a new voiceline is added to the game using their voice. Because Embark is using a tool to do the work someone would’ve done manually, they would’ve had to pay the person otherwise so I think a royalty-like payment any time the VA voice is used is completely fair. Otherwise it becomes what people are complaining about, that they’re effectively paying a one time fee for the VA voice and then use it for free for forever.
yes, that’s what they agreed to and were paid for. and that’s perfectly fine, they weren’t duped and had no issues with it, so even the flimsy moral outrage people come up with over supposed rights to things they create doesn’t apply.
Call me crazy but I think people getting cheated out of the fruits of their labor, even if they themselves might’ve signed their it away, should be criticized.
they aren’t being cheated. the labor they signed up and were paid for was recording the voices for the TTS system. you might not like the fact they did that, but that doesn’t change facts. attempting to lie about it just shows your level of intellectual bankruptcy.
I don’t know what kind of work you do but let’s say your work requires you to log into some kind a system that somehow knows to track the work you do. Now imagine you start your work and your co-worker logs themselves in your place. You do the labor, they get the benefit. Are you being cheated?
The VA would do that labor if there was no TTS with their voice as a model. The VA labor goes into that model because it is their voice. They do the labor but someone else benefits from it? Are they not being cheated?
And final thought experiment. If the VA-s owned the TTS system and Embark asks for a new voiceline. Are the VA-s supposed to give that new voiceline away for free just because some TTS system generated it? Wouldn’t Embark cheat them out their pay if they said “You made it for free so we should be able to use it for free.”?
The intellectual bankruptcy comes from you because instead of actually thinking about the situation you hide behind the “But they agreed to it” argument. People also agreed with indenture servitude, doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.
they were paid specifically to make the TTS and voice modulation system. none of the rest of your argument makes any sense whatsoever, because the core fundamental idea behind your entire argument is that they were “cheated”. they were not. they did the labor, they got the compensation. people were bitching because artists “weren’t being paid” for their work with AI, so somebody actually does pay them and you’re still whining. it just shows that you were never concerned with the artist in the first place.
I’m not hiding at all. to be perfectly frank, as an anarchist, I don’t believe in copyright to begin with, and have no issue with genAI copying the work of artists. ideas can not be owned, no matter what some capitalist stans such as yourself believe, and it’s ridiculous people say it’s “theft” in the first place.
but that isn’t even what’s happening here. these VAs were paid to create the system, knowing all along that puritains like you would villainize them for their work for no other reason than you think you should get to tell other people how they can live their lives. the sheer narcissism that you’re displaying is beyond belief.
Apparently you do think that indentured servitude, at least to the extent where the person agrees to step into servitude, is completely fine. After all they agreed to the contract.
It’s not indentured servitude, and that’s a weak ass argument trying to spin it like that. Nobody with the brains evolution gave a snail is falling for that shit. And you should be embarrassed that that’s the best argument you can come up with.
It’s such a blatantly, self-evidently wrong argument, that I’m not even going to dignify it with a counter argument because frankly, such grade-school bullshit like that is beneath both of us.