AI to voice the additional dialogue?

[DavidW]

22 minutes ago, Connelly said:

Beginning VAs who want some experience and practice. Hobbyist VAs who just want to do things for love to the art. Friends who like to help, and maybe discover a new passion.

To be fair, that argument overgeneralizes. SCS largely automates the assignment of spells to NPCs. I don’t lose sleep over the hobbyist spell-allocators and their lost opportunities.

[Guest the_sextein]

One last thing.  If Beamdog gets contacted by VA's and they decide to take action and state publicly that it's not ok to add AI voice lines even though we have been adding our voices and changing the scripts for 20 years.  Then it would be a reason to avoid doing it.  Until then, I see no reason not to.  They would contact you and tell you to take it down and like I said, even if you do it will still be uploaded by users that downloaded it originally and distributed through discord which is why I think most devs won't waste the time with this sort of thing, because it doesn't work.

If I were a noob voice actor then I would make my own mods and include my own voice in them.  Why should they expect us to make mods for them?  My mods for Anomaly are based off of leaked source code but the developer embraced the mod community after the tools were leaked.  Somebody made a 64 bit version of the game engine on their free time and the game now looks better than any modern game I own minus maybe cyberpunk.  It's not costing anyone anything and Stalker 2 will sell even better because they have a huge following on moddb for the anomaly mod.  win/win.

[BobT]

17 hours ago, Connelly said:

Beginning VAs who want some experience and practice. Hobbyist VAs who just want to do things for love to the art. Friends who like to help, and maybe discover a new passion. That's three situations that I can think of without any effort that do not need to involve professional VAs or money (not that you should skip on paying your VA just as a matter of principles), nor for which the age of a work matters at all. And I'd swear this was pointed out previously.

I don't recall seeing that, no. 
Right so we're talking "hobby" type situations that don't require money then. Well...they can then still just do it? 
If someone has a ready and willing voice actor available (especially one who wants to do it for free!) then why bother using AI or any other tool? No-one's stopping them still doing that?

Same with the art stuff, no-one's stopping anyone still painting pictures or whatever their hobby is lol. Have at it! 

[BobT]

16 hours ago, Guest the_sextein said:

One last thing.  If Beamdog gets contacted by VA's and they decide to take action and state publicly that it's not ok to add AI voice lines even though we have been adding our voices and changing the scripts for 20 years.  Then it would be a reason to avoid doing it.  Until then, I see no reason not to.  They would contact you and tell you to take it down and like I said, even if you do it will still be uploaded by users that downloaded it originally and distributed through discord which is why I think most devs won't waste the time with this sort of thing, because it doesn't work.

If I were a noob voice actor then I would make my own mods and include my own voice in them.  Why should they expect us to make mods for them?  My mods for Anomaly are based off of leaked source code but the developer embraced the mod community after the tools were leaked.  Somebody made a 64 bit version of the game engine on their free time and the game now looks better than any modern game I own minus maybe cyberpunk.  It's not costing anyone anything and Stalker 2 will sell even better because they have a huge following on moddb for the anomaly mod.  win/win.

Ooh what mods have you got for Anomaly, that's the Tower Offence game yeah? I played the first one, if so.

Anyways regarding the mods, I agree with you in practice there's nothing that could be done, but like yourself and David, I would also remove a mod if I received a REASONABLE or ACTIONABLE complaint. Such as where you said if the IP owner contacts and strongly suggests they'll pursue litigation, if I don't have the pockets or a good case, I'd remove. 

If a VA or someone else contacts, then it would depend on the "reasonableness" of the complaint. For me, If it was say, something they REALLY didn't want to be associated with (even with the disclaimers) I'd either change the content accordingly or remove that bit, or the mod. However if it's just "I don't like it" without any good reason and the mod isn't even reflecting on them, the human (as with the Edwin example) I'd probably not choose to honour that as "I don't like it" isn't a good enough reason in my book, when the OUTCOME IS THE SAME. 
And that reasonableness is also the same whether it's AI or not. Would "I don't like that you used Audacity to edit this, rather than my favourite xyz audio tool" be reasonable? To me, noop.

And again, ANY use of AI would use offline models only, and not see any models distributed (only output), with clear disclaimers for transparency, blabla as before.  with that, I can't see ANY difference (in outcome) between using AI or traditional tools / methods. 

Edited January 16 by BobT

[Guest the_sextein]

Anomaly is a stalker mod which is a series of first person shooters.  I do weapon pack animations.  Basically, I remodel the weapons and retexture them in blender and then I re animate them and import them back into the game.  The thing that is crazy is there is a free render software called daz3d and there is a plugin for that which will let you feed it a picture and it will use AI to transform a character model into the person in the picture.  Then you can animate the character model and render it.  It looks photo real so if people think AI voice is bad, wait until videos start to show up that look as good as Hollywood CGI versions of dead people.  It's going to get crazy and I think people are just going to have to get used to the idea that nothing is trusted or real on the internet.  I don't trust youtube or any news media on the net anyway and it's quickly becoming an impossible to control tornado of filth.  I could sell nude pictures of character models on Only Fans that people would think were a real person  if I wanted to.  Probably get more money than most of the women on there but I'm not motivated enough to keep up with demand.

[BobT]

44 minutes ago, Guest the_sextein said:

Anomaly is a stalker mod which is a series of first person shooters.  I do weapon pack animations.  Basically, I remodel the weapons and retexture them in blender and then I re animate them and import them back into the game.  The thing that is crazy is there is a free render software called daz3d and there is a plugin for that which will let you feed it a picture and it will use AI to transform a character model into the person in the picture.  Then you can animate the character model and render it.  It looks photo real so if people think AI voice is bad, wait until videos start to show up that look as good as Hollywood CGI versions of dead people.  It's going to get crazy and I think people are just going to have to get used to the idea that nothing is trusted or real on the internet.  I don't trust youtube or any news media on the net anyway and it's quickly becoming an impossible to control tornado of filth.  I could sell nude pictures of character models on Only Fans that people would think were a real person  if I wanted to.  Probably get more money than most of the women on there but I'm not motivated enough to keep up with demand.

Ahhh right. Thought you meant the game called it. 

And yeah, Pandora's box is pretty much open now. Feel sorry for the young people dating or chatting over the internet nowadays! Used to always be able to defeat the "Catfishes" by asking for a custom picture, sticking tongue out or some daft pose that someone with a picture set wouldn't have (and reverse image search to double-check), good luck with that when they can just generate one lol..

As with using AI for other stuff (anything to do with dead people etc.) I DO recognise the general feeling of unease that comes when considering such stuff and how that can easily translate to being "gross" and leading to an emotional response etc. It IS going to be used for some very dodgy stuff. 

But as you said, the cat is out of the bag already on that, so my take is why let it be used for ONLY dodgy stuff and not benign things like enjoying more of video games / mods? Where everything is fully declared (as mentioned) and the only end result is exactly the same as if done with traditional tools or methods (just better quality / more accessible). I hope more have a reasonable response and consider it's positive applications fully rather than just continue to tarnish it via negative emotions and dismiss it outright. 

Like I said a good example is Amelia Tyler the narrator for BG3. I love her work but she's been having allsorts of narrator replacement mods taken down. due to them using AI, and recently had a male narrator mod removed that hadn't even used her voice in the model! The model is for the OUTPUT / TARGET voice, as in the man's, NOT hers!  That is going too far in my book. Even the arguments already made here wouldn't cover that. No words being said in her voice, her voice not being part of any model, not in the output in any way blabla. 

[BobT]

Friend has done some further tweaking, have a listen to this! 

https://voca.ro/1fpIF6dBfSYJ
https://voca.ro/1l4TXSfrXKuE

All recorded using HER voice, and having to "put on" the accent to get it right. It's not just a push-button job. 

Again, COULD be done just the same by traditional means / human imitation, however this tech optimises the approach. Absolutely amazing! This will be great for remastering older games.
Remember also that even if one was to get a human VA back to re-do it, their voice will have probably changed (or sometimes sadly, lost it altogether) after 20 years or longer. Regardless, for MODDING this tech is awesome. 

Edited January 20 by BobT

[pete_smith1229]

11 hours ago, BobT said:

Friend has done some further tweaking, have a listen to this! 

https://voca.ro/1fpIF6dBfSYJ
https://voca.ro/1l4TXSfrXKuE

All recorded using HER voice, and having to "put on" the accent to get it right. It's not just a push-button job. 

Again, COULD be done just the same by traditional means / human imitation, however this tech optimises the approach. Absolutely amazing! This will be great for remastering older games.
Remember also that even if one was to get a human VA back to re-do it, their voice will have probably changed (or sometimes sadly, lost it altogether) after 20 years or longer. Regardless, for MODDING this tech is awesome. 

This is pretty damn impressive! Nice work!

[BobT]

On 1/21/2024 at 11:00 AM, pete_smith1229 said:

This is pretty damn impressive! Nice work!

Yeah it's bonkers how close it is! I mean if DIRECTLY compare side by side you'd be able to tell but I think as modded content it would integrate smoothly without breaking immersion. 
Apparently takes a lot of work to have it get the accent right, but pleased with the results. 

 

[cdx]

"AI to voice the additional dialogue?"

Yes, without any qualms, but you need to re-frame the context of the question. People currently are answering the wrong question.

Right now it is assumed to be "Is it ok to train a model on voiced lines from the original Voice Actor (VA) and use the model to generate more voiced lines without the VA permission?". Probably not, even though debatable. It is irrelevant though. The question should be: "How can I professionally voice mod content of existing characters with AI without infringing on the original VA rights?".

To answer the right question: Hire a new VA for 30 minutes, or get a skilled unpaid volunteer, who is happy with the below process: have them practice for a few minutes on originally voiced lines until you are happy they convey the essence of the character. They may sound very similar to the original, or not, up to you. Then have them record only new lines necessary to train an AI model. Use that model to voice the mod lines, and possibly the original lines as well, with your intonation input for higher quality. This is you hiring a new VA (a "VA Engineer", as opposed to old-school "VA Artisans", explained below) to voice the character, replacing the original VA. Distribute the mod, for the Edwin example, as "having a full Edwin voice-over, from a great new VA who makes 'Edwin sound more like Edwin then ever'".

This is pretty much the same as Matthew Mercer replacing Jim Cummings for Minsc. It works both for mods and commercially. New voice actor replaces old one. The difference between that and the Edwin example, is that you need a VA Engineer rather than a VA Artisan.
 

VA Artisan/VA Engineer and industry:

Spoiler

By VA Engineer I mean somebody who is happy to use technology to produce and license a package for voicing the character rather than voicing each line manually, which is what the VAs of old did and currently do, but not for long. The VA Engineer doesn't need any technical skills, it's just about the approach to work process and licensing, the engineering part can be done by anyone who can use the AI tooling. A good VA Engineer, especially with the advance of AI tooling over time, will be able to fully voice hundreds of characters, produce thousands of high quality voiced lines, at a tiny fraction of the time and cost previously needed. For a while you'll need cheaply sourced non-specialists to help with intonation (or do it yourself for a mod), especially for important lines, but this should improve.

Organised action by VA Artisans won't get in the way of VA Engineering more than sculptors can get in the way of 3D artists with 3D printers or glass-blowers can get in the way of engineers at glass factories. Artisans will keep producing artisanal products, but most commercial and hobby projects will make use of AI technology because it will be much cheaper and will be of higher quality (at high volumes) than most VA Artisans.

Whether current voice actors stay artisans or become engineers is up to them. But there will be people who will be happy to be VA Engineers and they will take over the industry. If you dislike that, think about this: which industry is better, one where you have 1,000 VA Artisans which can do total 5,000 voiced characters annually, each character of which has 50 lines of dialogue, or an industry where you have 1,000 VA Engineers (possibly the same people, up to them) which can do total 100,000 voiced characters with hundreds/thousands of lines of dialogue each, all at the same quality, time and cost? The latter also improves writing because the voice-over can be done much later, after re-writes, and re-done, characters can talk as much as necessary, provide many alternative lines for an interaction, like in Hades, etc. Also, makes full voicing possible for all games and mods in all languages, because the same number of people will be able to produce vastly larger amounts of voices and voiced lines.

Well. At least, up until the time when AI tooling allows you to fully synthesize and adjust generated voices, at which time the non-artisanal jobs for voice actors will be as coaches for full AI voice actor generators. In other words, participate in the production of the AI tooling. By then it should be the same for most jobs though, so we'll need to pick hobbies to be artisans at, while AI will do things at scale. To try to avoid AI doing things at scale is as Luddite as insisting nothing should be built in factories. Just, to avoid any moral issues, the AI tools should be trained ethically with purpose built / licensed art, voice, etc.

 

Edited January 28 by cdx

[BobT]

I can see professional VAs doing more stuff where they "lend" their voices to models. 
But as a modder if you already have someone there doing the VA, why would you bother with the AI? Unless it's just to fill in bits that need to be done when they're unavailable (in which case, good use of AI!). 

I don't really see the point of a full voice replacement, but again there's no difference to what's already available NOW with that. Even with a partial replacement, that can and is already done via traditional tools. AI just optimises the process..