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Stellaris gets a DLC about AI that features AI-created voices, director insists it's 'ethical' and 'we're pretty good at exploring dystopian sci-fi and don't want to end up there ourselves' (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 6 months ago by simple@lemm.ee to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

That said, this choice wasn't actually a problem right?

I mean this game doesn't use voice actors normally. If they used ai voice actors for this update only to represent the ai characters... isn't that just appropriate?

Previously all characters in this game were represented only by text, so literally nobody is being replaced here.

Another way to think about it would be via representation. We get worked up when an ethnic character on screen is played by a different ethnicity, an actor in blackface for example. And in that vein using ai for organic characters could be seen as offensive, but using ai for ai characters would not. In contrast could we see using human voices for ai characters to be insensitive? That may sound far fetched, but this is sci-fi, the ai characters in the game are fully sentient and in their fictional universe would have rights, the whole point is to make the player think about what that means.

Well I guess I have my takeaway, I may consider boycotting any game that uses human actors for ai characters. Just get an ai actor... seriously.

[-] Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Honestly, I'd argue that that's exactly what AI should be for. Either being used by that one guy to give voices to his passion project because he can't afford to hire voice actors, or to add a touch of the uncanny to an AI character.