this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
332 points (96.9% liked)

Technology

60105 readers
1856 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

There are uses of AI that are proving to be more than black and white. While voice actors, have protested their performances being fed into AI against their will, we are now seeing an example of this being done, with permission, in a very unique case.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The actor agreed to voice the character in the base game. As far as I'm aware there is no evidence of a soured relationship with the developers, no reason to deduce he would have refused to continue voicing the character were he still alive.

It would be unethical to use a dead actor's voice in a way they would have a good reason to object to if they could, but this doesn't seem to be the case here.

[–] echo64@lemmy.world -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disagree with this entirely. You can not say"well they worked with them in the past so they must have been totally okay with an ai resurrection post death"

[–] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's not what I'm saying at all.

This is not an AI resurrection.

This is an advanced voice changer.

They are hiring another actor to play the character, and then using a voice changer to make the new actor sound like the previous one. Were it not for the permission of the family, they would have re-cast the part, and re-recorded all of Reczek's lines from the base game to be consistent with the re-casting. The decision is between scrubbing his previous work, or using a voice changer.

In 2016 Disney released Rogue One, a film which featured a digital recreation of Peter Cushing, who had been dead for 22 years prior to the film's release. Do you consider that more or less unethical than Miłogost Reczek's voice being redone in the Cyberpunk DLC?

[–] echo64@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I reject your statement about it not being ai resurrection, it absolutely is. 100%. you can try and weasel out of it by saying "Oh but they had another actor provide the base that the ai model ran against", it doesn't change a single thing.

In 2016 Disney released Rogue One, a film which featured a digital recreation of Peter Cushing, who had been dead for 22 years prior to the film’s release. Do you consider that more or less unethical than Miłogost Reczek’s voice being redone in the Cyberpunk DLC?

It's the same exact problem.

[–] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I reject your assumption that he is against this. So many people have spent their lives creating art in a vein attempt to be remembered beyond their own lifetime. You are disrespecting the dead by assuming, without evidence, that he must have been against this, simply because you find it distasteful.

Peter Cushing died in 1994. He died well before any of this technology was possible. He couldn't possibly foresee the advances of technology in the two decades beyond his death. Cushing couldn't make his opinion on this subject known during his life because this technology wasn't even close to existing. However, Reczek could.

Reczek died in 2021. Technology to re-create dead actors was around for many years of his life. This was a well known fact, and a matter of public debate. Discussions on the ethics of this have been going for years before his death. He had every reasonable opportunity to make an informed opinion on this subject, and make that view known.

I have found no evidence that Reczek objected to this sort of thing. I have seen no evidence that the family or the studio are violating any stated or implied objection, nor are they doing this in a disrespectful way.