AI emulating voice actors

[Arvas]

4 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

Wow, this thread attracted a lot of scumbags since my last post here.

 

3 hours ago, Thacobell said:

A bunch of totally hinged people...

 

2 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

I fail to see how to have a meaningful discussion with such tactless ignorant bastards, who can't even get their damn facts straight. You don't like being treated with the respect you deserve? Go and distribute that manure you're spewing on a farmland, so that the plants can benefit from it.

Thank you for your informed opinion.

2 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

But for fun? For personal use? For anything that's not monetized in any way? And if it's clearly marked as "THIS IS AN IMITATION GENERATED BY A COMPUTER"? That I am not so sure about, though I am certain that there will be many great debates about it as this technology continues to mature and become more commonplace - for better or for worse.

Exactly! No one is talking about using those voices for profit or to generate "new" content. What is discussed here is to supplement the VA in a game by filling in parts that were left unvoiced, e.g., due to storage reasons.

[spookydichotomy]

perhaps take a moment of self-reflection to consider the moral framework that has led you to believe "it's totally okay to steal a human being's voice if it's just for fun"

[Graion Dilach]

If you put a mod up to the internet, it's no longer "personal use". Fair use, moreso, but not personal. And moentization is a hard word, when NexusMods is a primary platform these days and already tie downloads to accounts on which they throttle downloads unless they are paid ones (I wouldn't be surprised if they put it all behind a paywall ultimately).

But yeah, my opinion is very informed. I mean, I work in IT and I actually voiceacted in a handful of projects (and collaborating with much more talented voiceactors than I in these projects is an experience I still savor greatly). Which means that some rando forum scrub definitely knows this better than I.

Edited August 19, 2023 by Graion Dilach

[Jarinex]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels this way. I find the use of generated images and voices to be awful. It was fun for shitposting at first, but now it's become something that entertainment companies are trying to save a buck at the cost of peoples jobs. The fact that there is legit concern for someones livelihood is enough for me to be totally against the use of AI generation in this manner. Even if it's just "for fun", the machine is being fed and people are being affected by it. Hence, why some of us want nothing to do with it.

[Graion Dilach]

I'm more forgiving to generated images, for multiple reasons - in order to achieve consistency and good quality, you still need to touch them up to get them on par with an artistic vision and they are less likely to be used for impersonation. So I consider generated images used as rough source assets akin to stock photos/textures as fine and while they do endanger artist sweatshops, artist sweatshops aren't that much better either. (It's just an old concept, considering that Japan was already used for sweatshopping American animation in the '80s or the few Tom & Jerry cartoons Gene Deitch offloaded to Czechoslovakia in 1961). But yeah, AI imaginery used directly ain't better than the shoddy asset swaps you see everywhere and training an AI to directly fake a particular artist is a horrible thing.

Voiceacting is different though, because people don't do generic voicesets with AI but always try to exactly copy one particular individual. (And while a good sound engineer matters a lot at achieving the final sound, a sound engineer can't do much at masking accents and some of the personal traits of an actor). You don't have voiceactor sweatshops, your best bet is a sample library with a lot more limited usecases (like the Wilhelm scream).

Edited August 19, 2023 by Graion Dilach

[Bartimaeus]

I once saw art of a favorite character of mine turned into a literal genocide-supporting nazi. I certainly found it reprehensible, but should it be illegal to transform someone else's ideas and work? It was basically fan art, no matter how despicable I personally found it. Someone thought up and poured themselves into that character and their concept/personality, someone visually designed that character, someone wrote their dialogue, someone directed how that character should act and speak, and then someone actually acted out that character. Is that final part so sacred compared to the rest that only their creative work should be protected while the rest is perfectly fine for everyone to transform however they please? There are literally BG mods that wholesale take art and animations from other games (and artists?) while implementing them into the BG games that I've heard nary a complaint about, and never mind similar uses that happen outside of the IE games for much more questionable aims. I would be utterly disgusted if a character that I made was transformed by degenerates for pornographic purposes, but...is it illegal, is there anything I can do about it, is there anything that I should be able to do about it? Because that's the reality artists face any time they make basically anything.

Again, I am very curious to see how all of this shakes out, and I am still very much open to arguments (though not pointless ad hominem attacks that elucidate nothing) around the subject. Right now, my personal feeling is that this will all eventually become protected when it comes to monetary gain...but I just don't see the law caring about it outside of that, which would mean that nobody is going to be able to do anything about it when such transformative work comes to personal use, fan art, modding et al., no matter how objectionable the original artists and performers may find it. But perhaps I'm looking at all of this way too much from a "this is currently widely considered legal and acceptable" perspective instead of a "what do I personally think is right and should be legal" perspective - the latter would take a lot more thought and consideration on my part, and I'm not sure where I would ultimately land.

(e): Literally right now, I am (and for decades have been) using someone else's art to visually represent myself online. Just that is a transformative work in of itself that the artist could find utterly loathsome. What many horrible things have people like me said and done that people will unconsciously associate with the art they use to represent themselves that had absolutely nothing to do with what it was originally intended for? Crap all they can do about it, though.

Edited August 19, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Arvas]

On 5/3/2023 at 9:42 AM, Cahir said:

It's a shame he didn't describe which tools did he use to accomplish this. I'd love to experiment myself. Seeing the entire BG saga fully voiced makes me drooling.

They use ElevenLabs.

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Again, I am very curious to see how all of this shakes out, and I am still very much open to arguments (though not pointless ad hominem attacks that elucidate nothing) around the subject.

Exactly, thank you! I hope that I shouldn't take the lack of moderation as indicative that throwing around insults is somehow deemed an acceptable form of conduct in this forum.

I am happy to continue the discussion on ethical/legal implications of this, but it should be a bit more differentiated than "hurr durr AI bad, you're a bastard".

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Right now, my personal feeling is that this will all eventually become protected when it comes to monetary gain...but I just don't see the law caring about it outside of that, which would mean that nobody is going to be able to do anything about it when such transformative work comes to personal use, fan art, modding et al.

100% agreed. In the future of game development, VA artists will probably only record the most important lines of dialogue and the rest would be completed by AI. Voices would then be monetized via licenses.

However, as you say too, modding – especially for a 20 year old game – will probably not be targeted by this as there is no money involved.

[Bartimaeus]

On 8/19/2023 at 10:49 AM, Arvas said:

Exactly, thank you! I hope that I shouldn't take the lack of moderation as indicative that throwing around insults is somehow deemed an acceptable form of conduct in this forum.

I am happy to continue the discussion on ethical/legal implications of this, but it should be a bit more differentiated than "hurr durr AI bad, you're a bastard".

Moderation usually only comes in if it proves to be disruptive to an active discussion. If everyone ignores all the extracurricular crap someone in particular is throwing out, moderation will probably let it go (unless it's literally completely unrelated to the topic at hand) - if, on the other hand, people start responding in kind and it threatens to wreck the discussion, that's probably where you're more likely to see some action. I am personally not really a fan of engaging at all with those whom I consider to be difficult to talk to, as it just feels like entirely wasted time and effort on my part, so I usually just throw them on my ignore list and try to forget that they exist...at least for a time. As far as what Graion has said in relation to this particular discussion, I feel the most useful thing he mentioned was being obviously biased having done voice-acting himself. Mind you, bias isn't necessarily a bad thing, particularly not for something like this where it's clearly necessary to hear out the different sides and take into account the thoughts/feelings of the people who are the ones being directly affected by whatever is being discussed...but it is critically important to know when someone is biased so you can consider whether or not that's reflected in what they're saying.

It's also important to mention that, as far as we know, this kind of technology is still in its infancy. Graion mentioned image "AI" synthesization currently being rather weak and requiring effort to fix, but that may not always be the case in the future. I'm really just not super confident about certain types of art and performances being protected where others are not: either way I see it is people pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into their work and then having some kind of computer program mindlessly derive from those efforts, so why should one type be privileged over the other?

Edited August 20, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[polytope]

On 8/18/2023 at 10:12 PM, Bartimaeus said:

And if it's clearly marked as "THIS IS AN IMITATION GENERATED BY A COMPUTER"?

In principal yes, but such disclaimers are so easily scrubbed from the content or simply missed. Consider how often reports from "satirical" sites go viral among those who didn't read the fine print and assume it's for real.

12 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

I once saw art of a favorite character of mine turned into a literal genocide-supporting nazi. I certainly found it reprehensible, but should it be illegal to transform someone else's ideas and work? It was basically fan art, no matter how despicable I personally found it. Someone thought up and poured themselves into that character and their concept/personality, someone visually designed that character, someone wrote their dialogue, someone directed how that character should act and speak, and then someone actually acted out that character. Is that final part so sacred compared to the rest that only their creative work should be protected while the rest is perfectly fine for everyone to transform however they please?

Well, if it's a cartoon or anime or CGI character then no, it's vulgar but not illegal to draw them as a Nazi. Photo-shopping the actual human actor who plays a character into an SS uniform is different. Just as you can't use a person's face in representative media they didn't consent to (c.f. the deepfakes controversy) I'd argue that their voice as a similarly unique (if less easily distinguishable) extension of the person should be accorded the same degree of protection.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, polytope said:

Well, if it's a cartoon or anime or CGI character then no, it's vulgar but not illegal to draw them as a Nazi. Photo-shopping the actual human actor who plays a character into an SS uniform is different. Just as you can't use a person's face in representative media they didn't consent to (c.f. the deepfakes controversy) I'd argue that their voice as a similarly unique (if less easily distinguishable) extension of the person should be accorded the same degree of protection.

Is the U.S. actually there yet with legality regarding deepfakes? As much as I unabashedly hope Donald Trump gets the guillotine, I must confess some concerns with regards to a future where major political figures such as he can be made to dance and say anything via deepfakes and synthesized voices that swathes of the populace easily believe. From what I've seen of such efforts, they're currently not totally convincing, particularly when it comes to anything beyond potato quality, but again, that may well not hold true in the future - and clearly "not totally convincing" to me can be "very convincing" to some, as their use for defamation and disinformation has already been attempted in several cases for recent elections.

What's the line between the depiction of a "person" and a "character", anyways? Either way, if we start protecting individuals' likeness (be it their face, words, or even ascribed words) on that particular basis, I think that starts to be a much more cohesive argument for me.

1 hour ago, polytope said:

In principal yes, but such disclaimers are so easily scrubbed from the content or simply missed. Consider how often reports from "satirical" sites go viral among those who didn't read the fine print and assume it's for real.

Yeah, no kidding, but I'm still of the opinion that even if this sort of derived audiovisual synthesis becomes illegal...the law largely just isn't going to care due to how difficult it is to track down where it originated from. Civil suits exist for collecting damages, of course, but without clear targets, that's similarly difficult to pursue. Though if it's actually illegal, at least semi-respectable online platforms (e.g. Facebook) would probably have to make an effort to try to suppress and remove it, which could be helpful.

[polytope]

2 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

From what I've seen of such efforts, they're currently not totally convincing, particularly when it comes to anything beyond potato quality, but again, that may well not hold true in the future - and clearly "not totally convincing" to me can be "very convincing" to some, as their use for defamation and disinformation has already been attempted in several cases for recent elections.

After deepfakes got a sitewide ban on reddit they went to voat for a while before that was canned too, so I'm not sure where the community congregates now and aren't up to date on the capabilities, I believe the consensus was that the accuracy of the portrayal depended on how much time and effort the creator was willing to expend on feeding the machine learning model various angles of photographed faces, of which many can be gleaned from a film if you go through it frame by frame.

7 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

What's the line between the depiction of a "person" and a "character", anyways? Either way, if we start protecting individuals' likeness (be it their face, words, or even ascribed words) on that particular basis, I think that starts to be a much more cohesive argument for me.

The line between the person and their character is indeed less clear when you have an actor portraying a character who started out as an illustration, especially if more than one actor plays them over the years, but I'll certainly agree that the individual human's likeness is the important thing that should be sacrosanct against impersonation, even if currently legal and permissible... it's often the case that there's a legislation lag where the courts have no ability to pursue charges for a new thing that's obviously morally wrong and directly harmful.

[InKal]

omg, calm down LOL

 

My favorite mod is Keto and it has that beautiful girl who created this masterpiece voice, pretty sure she is voicing Keto (her alter ego pretty much) herself and she has really good voice and thats that. There is also anorther classic Kelsey, well, generally I like it, it's awesome but Kelsey is also voiced by his creator and ekhem... imo he should have really just steal Jan Jansen voice for his voicelines. ehehehhehe heheheheh hehehehehehebnehbehe