Board 8 > Bayonetta voice actress Hellena Taylor calls for a boycott of Bayonetta 3

(+) Yeah! (+)

GranzonEx posted...

You're getting hung up on the direction/performance of the voice from a real person when nobody said the AI VA will not have sound directors giving instuctions on their "performance". The "performance" is artificial but the "creativity" will still be human. Once the AI VA has essentially perfectly emulated Hale's voice it can in theory perform any character the director of the game/movie desires. And her voice can then be used in 500 games a year, without the need of her physically recording lines, and can even be used 500 years in the future at the discretion of her estate.

I guess what I'm saying I don't trust a sound director to make an AI voice do what a great voice actor would do.

Like I would expect a sound director using a Jennifer Hale AI to do basically what I said and have her voice imitate the existing Bayonetta, which is often no good. And if you had a Jennifer Hale AI that needed to do something completely new, sure an AI could be directed to do it but does it reach the same conclusion the actual Jennifer Hale does?

I just think there's a lot more skill and creativity in the acting direction from the VA themselves than just their voice. Saying you just want a character to sound like the VA and an AI with the guiding hand of a director is going to create the same content the genuine article would is dumbing down their role in the process immensely.

Lopen posted...

sure an AI could be directed to do it but does it reach the same conclusion the actual Jennifer Hale does?

What if it does? What if it's better?

It sounds like you don't think AI will ever be as good as a person but the boring dystopia that everyone in this topic is pointing to is under the assumption that we're in a world where the AI is good enough or better than using a person. What then?

I'm not saying it'll be better or worse than the person necessarily I'm just saying it's not the person. You're not going to capture inferences Jennifer Hale is going to make about what a character should be with an AI because the data for that isn't going to exist in the training set. That data isn't included in voice clips.

You're going to get her voice that can be melded to what the director's vision is. Not the same thing. How valuable the intuition of a voice actor is going to vary per the voice actor and the part but yeah.

AI?

travolta.gif

I'm pretty convinced that AI even remotely approaching the level of truly replacing the soul/creativity/mastery/nuance of actual artists would require something approaching sentience, which I mean sure we very well might see in our lifetime. But this take that totally soulless AI tools wielded by engineers and idea guys is going to surpass and entirely supplant legitimate artists while somehow also being entirely predicated on lifting material from those human artists who are now supposedly outmoded is just something I can't agree with.

back to the bayo side of the topic

https://twitter.com/jhaletweets/status/1582583969740394498

Hale's also been retweeting support & corroborations of schreier's reporting

Lopen posted...

I guess what I'm saying I don't trust a sound director to make an AI voice do what a great voice actor would do.

Jennifer Hale can be the director then, if she's so good. She can also do a bunch of other characters, since she's not limited to her own voice anymore. Kratos, Spongebob, Pikachu, whatever.

I imagine some top VAs will go in that direction when it becomes more commonplace.

I think you're focusing too much on "will AI be good enough to replace humans?" when the more relevant question is "will AI be better for the bottom line?"

AriaOfBolo posted...

I think you're focusing too much on "will AI be good enough to replace humans?" when the more relevant question is "will AI be better for the bottom line?"

I don't think licensing this stuff will be as cheap as you think. Nor do I think configuring the AI to do voices as you want them will be as simple as you think.

Yes it'll be about bottom line but I feel it's going to be about throughput and bookkeeping more than raw cash. The only difference is you're hiring some AI engine operators (who ironically will probably be better paid than VA) instead of VA.

Like the cash efficient option has always been to remove VA entirely, and then beyond that has been to hire green no names. Clearly quality does matter at some level.

It's already cheap and easy today. Only holdup is quality, which just needs to get a bit better on the tech side (couple years) and the expectations reduced a bit on the consumer side (decade-ish)

Everything is cheap before the competitive market exists for it.

If you think this tech is going to be widespread and easy and everyone is just going to do it off of freeware licenses because we're in a pirate's utopia you're more naive than I am.

There's going to be some super overpriced proprietary way to do it well and that's going to be the standard that stomps the competition down.

Lopen posted...

Everything is cheap before the competitive market exists for it.

If you think this tech is going to be widespread and easy and everyone is just going to do it off of freeware licenses because we're in a pirate's utopia you're more naive than I am.

There's going to be some super overpriced proprietary way to do it well and that's going to be the standard that stomps the competition down.

I feel like if I made an AI product, I'd want to sell it as a) free product with distribution/licensing fees and/or b) expensive but worthwhile product with publishing ability, like maybe Photoshop or so.

Lopen posted...

Everything is cheap before the competitive market exists for it.

If you think this tech is going to be widespread and easy and everyone is just going to do it off of freeware licenses because we're in a pirate's utopia you're more naive than I am.

There's going to be some super overpriced proprietary way to do it well and that's going to be the standard that stomps the competition down.

I'm not following this argument at all. In reality, there's two variables: X, the quality threshold needed before it's "good enough" to replace human VAs and Y, the cost threshold needed before it's "cheap enough" to replace human VAs. It's just a race right now between a bunch of AI companies to cross X and Y first and secure widespread adoption and I don't see any reason why it can't be reached in the near future.

I'm not sure what some super overpriced proprietary way that stomps the competition has to do with anything. If some AI company creates some $1 million/year product that's extremely good, gaming companies will just shrug and go "oh cool product bro, we'll just stick with this cheaper one that's good enough for us". In reality, the AI company will probably offer a cheaper version of their high end product just so they don't immediately price out 99% of the market.

As for freeware licenses and all that, I don't think that's relevant. Even if the license is in the thousands per year, that's still cheaper than hiring VAs.

I feel like it's more likely one of the big corps will buy out the AI voice company that does it best and patent the tech so no one else can use it.

MacArrowny posted...

I feel like it's more likely one of the big corps will buy out the AI voice company that does it best and patent the tech so no one else can use it.

Yep

And then you're gonna pay out the ears for it. Photoshop will look cheap.

You're all talking like it's 2020 lol. Catch up on the paid and free AI generators available today and then come back.

Do you expect that free service will continue to be the norm once AI becomes an industry standard? We've seen the monetization cycle play out with so many other emergent techs already.

Kenri posted...

i feel like ai sex pests are absolutely in our (not even too distant) future actually

Didn't it take Twitter hours to turn a Taylor Swift bot into a white supremacist or something like that?

Yeah, there will absolutely be problematic AI. Zero question.

Oh by free I mean open source, which is an important distinction here

foolm0r0n posted...

You're all talking like it's 2020 lol. Catch up on the paid and free AI generators available today and then come back.

The paid ones are much better than the free ones, from what I've seen. And again, the ones that start free will get bought out anyway.

squexa posted...

I'm not sure what some super overpriced proprietary way that stomps the competition has to do with anything. If some AI company creates some $1 million/year product that's extremely good, gaming companies will just shrug and go "oh cool product bro, we'll just stick with this cheaper one that's good enough for us". In reality, the AI company will probably offer a cheaper version of their high end product just so they don't immediately price out 99% of the market.

I mean, why don't corporations now use cheaper/free products instead of using Office/Photoshop/etc.? They go with the bigger product that has more features and better support even if it means paying out the ear.

Open source only matters until someone patents the industry standard

We can use Open Office but no one in serious business uses that over Microsoft Office due to compatibility issues with the standard everyone uses

Like seriously thinking that voice AI tech is going to continue to be cheap as it sees more widespread use is way more naive than thinking voice actors will continue to get work here. We've seen this scenario play out time and time again.

feel free to call me naive! I'm just BSing about stuff that I think sounds interesting but don't know much about.

MacArrowny posted...

The paid ones are much better than the free ones, from what I've seen. And again, the ones that start free will get bought out anyway.

I mean, why don't corporations now use cheaper/free products instead of using Office/Photoshop/etc.? They go with the bigger product that has more features and better support even if it means paying out the ear.

Sure, they go with the bigger product. My whole post was addressing Lopen's idea that AI VA will be so expensive that it will somehow hamper the mass adoption of AI VA within the industry. The AI companies are racing to be the first to mass adoption and they will need to be cheaper than human VAs for the companies to switch.

neonreaper posted...

feel free to call me naive! I'm just BSing about stuff that I think sounds interesting but don't know much about.

Was referring to foolmo, the tech idealist, more than you, but yeah. This tech will not be cheap you can be sure of that. And the tech gets bought up and patented before the crappy open source stuff gets competent or is deemed "not good enough" by the big studios that actually care about voice acting. That's just how tech that is actually promising works. It gets monetized.

squexa posted...

Sure, they go with the bigger product. My whole post was addressing Lopen's idea that AI VA will be so expensive that it will somehow hamper the mass adoption of AI VA within the industry. The AI companies are racing to be the first to mass adoption and they will need to be cheaper than human VAs for the companies to switch.

I think this conversation is confusing mass adoption with universal adoption. We're in a race to the bottom as people try to crack the tech and attract investors and support, but once businesses start looking for return on investment that will change. They'll make tech proprietary and set prices.

It's pretty easy for me to believe we'll get to a point where "good enough" tech will be relatively cheap enough for big and mid level productions to replace, let's say, Chris Pratt. It is much harder for me to believe they will get cheap and good enough to replace video game voice actors, who are apparently working for peanuts. Cheap or free "bad" AI voices might enable very small devs to use tech to add voice acting, which could be interesting, but that will probably have different artistic applications than trying to convincingly imitate a human!

I feel like video game companies would value the time saved over using AI versus real people.

Also live service games could add new voices quickly without having to book the VO or try to have the VO record lines for characters and interactions that don't exist yet. Like in a fighting game where the VO has to record lines against all of the DLC characters that might ever be added to the game.

Maybe I'm wrong that VO is a quick process but being able to do that stuff passively seems like the biggest draw to using AI in an industry that depends on crunch and deadlines.

It's all done in parallel. It doesn't realistically save any time because VA isn't ever going to be the bottleneck in development.

LiquidOshawott posted...

while I dont fully trust Platinums side, this part I strongly disagree with. Theres a lot of legal reasoning to just make the reasoning for her leaving private.

I just want to swing back to this. There's more than just legal reasoning.

Imagine if Platinum had said this upfront without Taylor saying anything. Whether it was true or false, people would have very rightly called them petty, unprofessional, and vindictive. And Taylor would likely be getting even worse heat than she is now on top of that. It's absurd to act like this would have been better for anyone involved.

kevwaffles posted...

I just want to swing back to this. There's more than just legal reasoning.

Imagine if Platinum had said this upfront without Taylor saying anything. Whether it was true or false, people would have very rightly called them petty, unprofessional, and vindictive. And Taylor would likely be getting even worse heat than she is now on top of that. It's absurd to act like this would have been better for anyone involved.

That's exactly my point? Platinum doesn't want to be called cheap. Taylor doesn't want to get blacklisted for asking too much. This NDA benefits the industry overall - and so the companies that have the most power - because messy public discussion of salaries serve to disrupt that balance.

This is basically the same rationale why there's an unspoken rule to not discuss salaries in the workplace. People get mad when they find problems. It benefits the company, not the worker, for it to be that way.

If AI voice acting is adopted, won't it be guaranteed to be cheap? The only selling point is that it's less expensive than hiring real voice actors. If it were more expensive, you would just hire a real voice actor.

MacArrowny posted...

I mean, why don't corporations now use cheaper/free products instead of using Office/Photoshop/etc.?

They often do. The world runs on linux

Lopen posted...

foolmo, the tech idealist,

Oh right, I forgot about your reading comprehension

I definitely think the AI takeover of these fields will happen, it's just a matter of when. I'd guess it's probably beyond the scope of our lifetimes (though we probably see the beginning of it, just it hasn't crowded out real people entirely yet) but we're heading for a cyberpunk dystopia and there's no stopping it.

unless climate change can take it down.

foolm0r0n posted...

Oh right, I forgot about your reading comprehension

I didn't forget about your life comprehension that's why I spelt it out for you

Spelt is a noun

did you guys know foolmo develops games

foolm0r0n posted...

Spelt is a noun

if you're talking about the wheat, yeah

Are you implying I'm talking about doing something with wheat?

please do not the wheat

I thought it was a fish

AriaOfBolo posted...

I thought it was a fish

That's smelt

I thought it was sophisticated and elegant

NFUN posted...

I thought it was sophisticated and elegant

That's Lopen

https://twitter.com/platinumgames/status/1583302996749787137?t=FX3YxWttrtNVz8UNT4bKow&s=19

bumping this topic because it amused me

Big oof

https://twitter.com/hellenataylor/status/1584415390171480066?t=UMmojiRyt1bCxdszJYJyfg&s=19

Yeah Im all for better pay to VAs but this isnt that

Next up Jason Schreier posting the actual receipts that were shown to Bloomberg instead of just saying they've seen them

Yeah basically admitting that the Bloomberg story is accurate after initially claiming it wasn't is a big yikes, she's confirming she lied or at least omitted the full story in her initial reports and still touting that false $450 million franchise number.

I suspect she didn't expect someone else to come forward with receipts.

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

Next up Jason Schreier posting the actual receipts that were shown to Bloomberg instead of just saying they've seen them

Probably not going to happen, don't think he wants to burn his sources on that one.

Bayo 3 story spoilers are also out there now so watch out

Unless you're someone boycotting the game then they're there for you to read