AI voice synthesising is being hailed as the future of video games - but at what cost? (Guardian)

[highplainsdem]

https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/14/ai-voice-synthesising-is-being-hailed-as-the-future-of-video-games-but-at-what-cost

When the epic open-world PlayStation 4 game Red Dead Redemption 2 was developed in 2013, it took 2,200 days to record the 1,200 voices in the game with 700 voice actors, who recited the 500,000 lines of dialogue.

It was a massive feat that is nearly impossible for any other studio to replicate – let alone a games studio smaller than Rockstar Games.

But with advances in artificial intelligence it is becoming easier and easier to recreate human voices to create automated real-time responses, near limitless dialogue options and speech tailored to a user’s unique input. But the technology raises questions about the ethics of synthesising voices.

-snip-

In Japan earlier this month, the Japan Performing Arts Workers’ Association held a press conference raising concerns about the impact AI will have on voice acting and music. The group – which reportedly has about 52,000 workers as members – called for legislation to protect their jobs.

-snip-

SAG-AFTRA (the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) will begin negotiating with film and TV producers and studios soon, and I expect their demands will include protecting actors from being exploited via AI.

They negotiate separately with game developers. I don't know when their current agreement regarding video games will expire.

But they have gone on strike in the past: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%E2%80%932017_video_game_voice_actor_strike .

[JHB]

1. A buddy of mine is a voice actor (VA). His credits include some household names...

...for animated shows and video games, but he's not really a top-tier "name" himself.

He does ok for an actor, but it's still the freelancer's life: work is either either way too busy, or you have nothing.

It's a similar situation for illustrators and artists, as "AI art" becomes more easily accessible.

Bottom line mentality will always choose throwing people to the wolves to gain a short-term benefit no matter how obvious it is that using these tools will undermine the very thing the companies rely on for their income.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

2. So, there might be computer games ... where the 'voices' are actually generated by ... computers?

[highplainsdem]

4. Read reply 1, if you think this is funny.

[LisaM]

7. Exactly.

If we as Democrats can't stand up for workers, or see the need to, then the Democratic party is no longer the party that workers should turn to.

Don't bleat about a $20 minimum wage for service workers if you are willing to throw a whole profession under the bus.

[highplainsdem]

11. +1,000,000

[Hugh_Lebowski]

9. It's funny in the sense that 'AI' as such is really not necessary

to accomplish what's being described.

Computers doing voice synthesis has been around since the 1970's at least. It's gotten better and better as a result of computers getting more and more powerful in terms of memory and processing power. You don't need AI for this.

Unless game companies start saying 'The Captain was voiced by Patrick Stewart' when it actually was an AI trained to mimic Patrick Stewart ... there ain't squat anyone can do about this advancement.

You want to keep your job reading lines for computer games? Do it better than a computer possibly can. Or be famous.

Just like if you couldn't build cars and TV's and fridges faster than 'machines', you lost your job 70 years ago.

You know how many millions upon millions of people don't have their same jobs because of technology replacing them? Imagine running, I dunno, Bank Of America with telephones, typewriters, and adding machines. It would probably need to employ like 50M human beings.

[highplainsdem]

10. I wonder how long it will be until you find out AI can do your job? Maybe

not quite as well, but well enough, and for a lot less money.

I've seen a lot of posts on Reddit from people who were certain their jobs were secure, because they were good at them. Then they heard from their bosses about how sorry the bosses were, and they knew the employee was better than the AI replacement, but the savings couldn't be ignored...

[Hugh_Lebowski]

13. Could happen I suppose but doubtful in my case ...

Think how many billions of mail carriers the world would need if every email, tweet, and text message had to be physically carried from one human to another, as another example.

Do you realize how many billions of theoretical jobs have been lost to technology and machines over the past 200 years?

It's less a case of not realizing the danger you mentioned and more a case of realizing that the trend of 'jobs being replaced by machines' has been an absolutely relentless march towards 'efficiency', and much of your objection is what people were saying 100 years ago as machines replaced workers in factories and such.

Many jobs will be lost due to AI, but there ain't squat we can really do about it. History already proves that workers rarely 'win' these sorts of societal battles.

[highplainsdem]

14. We're not talking about theoretical jobs, let alone not

having "billions of mail carriers" if every email, tweet and text had to be snail-mailed.

We're talking about massive job losses happening, before there's any chance for new jobs to be created by this tech. Which is why even tech bros, who are NOT socialists, are talking at least vaguely about a UBI being necessary.

And that's only one of the problems AI is causing.

We need to control its development and use now, as the EU is seriously planning to do, rather than letting it destroy the economy, the educational system, and politics.

For one thing, as another DUer pointed out, having AI replace workers drains money from Social Security and Medicare - and from revenue on wages.

AI expropriates the talent and work and intellectual property of human society and hands control and profits to relatively few individuals and companies. It'll result in much greater inequality.

That's worth fighting. Saying "there ain't squat we can really do about it" guarantees human society losing.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

16. Yeah, the suddenness/rapidity is problem #1

And I get the argument about appropriation and greater inequality. But that's been happening all along, it's just been more subtle and spread out over more time.

Unfortunately 'jobs for the sake of jobs' ... basically only happens in socialist societies.

I'm not saying it's not worth fighting for, just that I don't think the common (hu)man is going to be able to DO ... shit. That's not how it works. If you can be replaced by a machine ... you will be, sooner rather than later.

It's just another intractable cataclysm we're facing, along with climate change.

Of course, if humans stop using fossil fuels (or run out), we'll ALL have jobs in the fields so there's that.

[highplainsdem]

17. You sound like a fatalist. I'm not. And I hope for your sake you really

aren't a fatalist, even if you're in the habit of talking like one, because nothing makes you more helpless than assuming you are. Whether it's something as personal as a health problem or as vast as the potential threats from climate change and AI, it's best to believe you can do something, rather than resigning yourself to failure and disaster.

[highplainsdem]

19. ...

[Happy Hoosier]

18. AI will eventually be used regardless...

… as games become more advanced AI will be able to to customize NPC responses to the players actions. Right now, the NPC’s are limited to whatever the writers anticipated. To move to the next level, the games will have to leverage dialogue capabilities that go beyond to playing pre-recorded dialogue. That’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of time.

[highplainsdem]

5. ????????

[Tetrachloride]

6. synthetic voices

[highplainsdem]

8. You thought HAL was a synthetic voice?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/movies/hal-2001-a-space-odyssey-voice-douglas-rain.html

[Tetrachloride]

12. The idea was there.

[highplainsdem]

15. That was voice communication with computers so people wouldn't have

to type commands or read text responses. Not AI being trained on human voices to replace actors who want to keep working, and to deceive audiences into believing the artificial voices they hear are human.

[Happy Hoosier]

20. Okay... I'm confused.

A whole lotta sci-fi imagines artificially generated voices that sound human. This is not a new idea. The Star Trek “holodeck” imagines such a thing.

Now… if AI is actually trained on an actor’s voice, then I think that actor should receive a royalty whenever their voice pattern is used. But quite soon, AI won’t really require specific training to synthesize realistic, convincing voices.

[highplainsdem]

21. Earlier thread about this:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217644665