Impact of AI on gaming industry jobs *spawn
- Thread starter Karamazov
- Start date
I guess the current actor strike, covers voice acting also when it comes to AI stuff....
Saves time, builds more content and allows for generative/procedural content. Makes sense to me.
This is already happenings to some extent. The Finals uses AI voice actors, and CP2077's expansion used an AI to clone a dead actors voice, with permission of his family. The Phantom Liberty example is interesting, because they hired a new actor to speak the lines, and used an AI to change the voice to sound like the original actor. So it's more akin to motion capture than just using a text to speech solution.
I understand people's concern about this, because it does have the capability to make a voice actor's job obsolete. But motion capture has done this for an actors physical movements, and characters in games have cloned the movements, likenesses and performances of famous people since basically as long as games have existed. Just look at Wulong and Law from Tekken... They are clearly Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee in video game form. And those real life people had no input, or financial stake on the games use of their physical performances being reenacted in those games. If those characters are OK to use in games, then it's a really fine line to separate an AI voice from being OK to being infringement on an actor's performance.
There was a guy posting on the Unity forums about swapping to Godot or something and using ChatGPT to create all the game scripts. Saves time, builds more content and allows for faster game iteration, I guess. Can also replace the community managers with bots. The ultimate company will be one with zero employees!
Okay, this ain't the thread for that. Let's keep this one on Sony's studios and the AI talk in that thread.
Well if they are willing to pay the original voice actors with royalties for each line generated or each unit sold for using their voices that would be a dream passive income. Otherwise we are just eliminating fully the human factor and favoring only the element of consumption for those that still have income and weren't replaced by an AI
Haha. Sorry. There is just overwhelming pressure on studios to cut costs while increasing scope, depth, quantity, quality or all of the above.I expected a guy named 'iroboto' to say and agree to something like that.
Booooo!!!
It’s unfortunate that cuts are being handed out, but perhaps publishers will switch to smaller budgets and more directed experiences to reduce risk or we are going to continue with the cuts.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Nothing wrong with AI replacing this stuff IMO. The guy who made horse carriages is out of work too, so I'm told.
But there is a difference if you use an actors voice without compensating him/her. Then of course there is the part of who pays for the training data?
The difference is that new technologies were substituting old positions with new for people to work.
AI is replacing the people working on the same jobs
Wasn't sure whether to place this in RSPC or not. Let's keep it here for now.
How many people do you need to publish a paper today? I think its way less than 20 years ago. Hosting a website is easy, print a paper and deliver it its very complicated.
You can host millions of papers on one server administrated by one person world wide.
There's basically two sides to this argument.
The first is the inevitability of and resistance to change, such as the automation of manufacturing which saw people lose their jobs to machines. We had the Luddites and sabotage. Over time, these jobs were replaced with other jobs no-one could have predicted so resisting the changes would have meant limiting productivity. Lots is better now because of those difficult transitions.
On the other side, the scope and speed of AI impacts are unprecedented. It's not so much a qualitative difference as a quantitative. If machines can run a company and produce all the content faster than people, what value have people? If MS can replace all its staff with AI and make 10x more money without paying any wages, would that be a successful company? If the whole world is run faster and more effectively by machine, what do the people do?
In a Star Trek like future, the machines will do the work and people will just play. The realities of our world suggest that's highly implausible.
Which is where this is a very political and ethical conversation! Responses largely divide into whether one has a hopeful or cynical expectation. The optimists will see opportunities and assume everything will adapt and balance out as it always has done in the past. The pessimists will expect the worst outcomes which will be pretty dire, notably because the rate of unemployment will greatly exceed the rate of new jobs.
No-one actually has any insight at this point so it's just guesswork and emotionally-driven opinions. The only given is more people will lose their livelihood in the short term, and that'll start extending to more and more roles. As I said, even coders aren't safe as ChatGPT et al can create code. If people losing their jobs can find alternatives elsewhere, including stuff they enjoy doing as that's what they are losing (a voice artist retraining as a plumber might be employed but they are unlikely to be happy), it's not a problem. If they can't, what is the expectation for employment and how things will change?
What should the voice over artists do instead when they are no longer needed? And then what should the artists do instead when they are replaced? And then the coders? And then the doctors? What new economy can arise where the productivity of these people is now done by machine and the people are adding to that with something only people can do? In the past, machines were limited in flexibility meaning people could do more advanced things, but that's no longer the case. Machines will be quicker and more accurate at everything eventually.
The first is the inevitability of and resistance to change, such as the automation of manufacturing which saw people lose their jobs to machines. We had the Luddites and sabotage. Over time, these jobs were replaced with other jobs no-one could have predicted so resisting the changes would have meant limiting productivity. Lots is better now because of those difficult transitions.
On the other side, the scope and speed of AI impacts are unprecedented. It's not so much a qualitative difference as a quantitative. If machines can run a company and produce all the content faster than people, what value have people? If MS can replace all its staff with AI and make 10x more money without paying any wages, would that be a successful company? If the whole world is run faster and more effectively by machine, what do the people do?
In a Star Trek like future, the machines will do the work and people will just play. The realities of our world suggest that's highly implausible.
Which is where this is a very political and ethical conversation! Responses largely divide into whether one has a hopeful or cynical expectation. The optimists will see opportunities and assume everything will adapt and balance out as it always has done in the past. The pessimists will expect the worst outcomes which will be pretty dire, notably because the rate of unemployment will greatly exceed the rate of new jobs.
No-one actually has any insight at this point so it's just guesswork and emotionally-driven opinions. The only given is more people will lose their livelihood in the short term, and that'll start extending to more and more roles. As I said, even coders aren't safe as ChatGPT et al can create code. If people losing their jobs can find alternatives elsewhere, including stuff they enjoy doing as that's what they are losing (a voice artist retraining as a plumber might be employed but they are unlikely to be happy), it's not a problem. If they can't, what is the expectation for employment and how things will change?
What should the voice over artists do instead when they are no longer needed? And then what should the artists do instead when they are replaced? And then the coders? And then the doctors? What new economy can arise where the productivity of these people is now done by machine and the people are adding to that with something only people can do? In the past, machines were limited in flexibility meaning people could do more advanced things, but that's no longer the case. Machines will be quicker and more accurate at everything eventually.
There's also an old scifi story where the world are actually run by super AI, and people are happy, and people are working.
People just didn't know that their work were uneeded. People thinks they are in control and they are having real jobs
I would really enjoy emergent conversation with NPCs. No need for emergent quest and interaction.
Just an emergent conversation would already be awesome
That's not entirely accurate, though. Automation has removed many jobs from many industries. There are plenty of examples of technology removing the need for many human filled positions going back before the invention of the cotton gin. The auto industry alone has gone through a couple of periods of replacing workers through automation.
Also, ownership of a voice or image is sort of a weird concept. Remember that Rockstar has been sued for having the actress who played Ms Cleo sound too much like Ms Cleo. They also won a lawsuit filed by Lindsey Lohan who claimed the girl in the red bikini in GTA5's loading screens looked too much like her. They just showed the judge the pictures of the girl they used as reference. Hell, John Fogerty got sued for sounding like John Fogerty. This gets into ownership of the the way someone looks, or talks, or moves that I find bizarre. Had Rockstar lost the Lohan case, would the real girl in the red bikini have to stop looking like herself because the court found she looked too much like Lindsey? Had Fogerty lost his case, would he have to change his music to sound less like his music?
I fully understand people being upset if they are attempting to use an actor's likeness or voice without their permission or compensation. But the generic use of AI generated human sounding voices I think just falls under the same category as the cotton gin. And the real muddy part of this argument is when does any art, AI or otherwise, cross the line to being infringement.
In some ways, voice actors are already taking away jobs from other voice actors when they fill multiple rolls by changing their voices. This is done often by imitating a different dialect and appropriating some local inflection. They are, in effect, part of the problem that they are pointing out with AI voice actors. I would say that motion capture performers are in very much the same boat, as they often perform multiple roles. But now if AI can generate mocap or vocal performances it's a problem to replace those jobs?
case in point: nolan north
he replaces nathan fillion in destiny 2
What's the most important aspect for you? Production and consumption? Or the human experience?
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