Prominent voice actor Jennifer Hale has criticized the growing use of AI-manipulated voiceover.
Hale has worked in the voiceover industry for decades now, lending her talents to countless projects including Bayonetta 3, Overwatch, and the Mass Effect Trilogy where her Commander Femshep performance became beloved across the known universe.
The actor has now taken to social media to fire back against AI voiceover. "Technology can reproduce someone’s appearance, it can reproduce the sound of their voice," she writes. "It cannot send through the oxygen that brings those 'casings' to life, the clarion call of their soul, the unique signature that is the essence of every single one of us. All else is hollow."
Hale's somewhat poetic comments follow on from this week’s controversy, which saw US union SAG-AFTRA sign a joint deal with Replica Studios that "paves the way for professional voiceover artists to safely explore new employment opportunities for their digital voice replicas," according to the union's announcement.
Several high-profile voice actors from Starfield, Diablo 4, and Baldur’s Gate 3 logged on to slam the "disappointing" deal as many union members were supposedly not consulted beforehand, despite the union claiming that it approached "affected members."
SAG-AFTRA previously went on strike for 118 days last year to protest Hollywood studio's streaming contracts and planned AI use - making their video game deal even more surprising. Hale has seemingly added her voice to the growing discontent.
AI manipulation has been a hot topic for many months now. Several actors similarly slammed Microsoft's recent partnership with InWorld AI which aimed to generate dialogue, quests, and "story" - threatening many roles within the industry in a mission to seemingly cut costs, rather than lighten the workload for developers.
AI development isn't just unpopular with voice actors, however, since famed director Hideo Kojima claimed that "humans should be above AI." The developers behind Whisker Squadron, the gorgeous space combat roguelike, also refused to ever use AI for voiceover work. And indie developer Xalavier Nelson Jr. recently mentioned that his oddball comedy, An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs, couldn’t have been developed today due to dangers surrounding generative AI.
You can read up on the upcoming indies of 2024 to find games made by real humans.
