AI voice...or rather lack of it, why? Remember X3?

[Daviso]

Please bring it back. We had voiced descriptions back in X3, when AI voice technology didn’t even exist, and now that we have AI voice technology specifically built for this kind of thing, we have none... Why? Bring it for ships, weapons, factions, etc.

You could also add some voiced news stations so we can actually HEAR what’s happening in the galaxy. This would be really easy to implement and would add so much more immersion to the game.

[Quinch]

I'd be cool with a synthesized voice, provided Betty's VA consents {and gets paid accordingly}. LLM-based generative AI bastu droppings? Absolutely not.

[S!rAssassin]

I'd like to hear old "Target is now in firing range". On screen markers very tiny...

[vvvvvvvv]

now that we have AI voice technology

And it is awful. AI voices are recognizable, and several new voices in embassy are AI generated and bad.

It should be either a live actor or no voice. The only exception is background chatter. Ship computer should be voiced by a human.

[Uwe Poppel]

now that we have AI voice technology

And it is awful. AI voices are recognizable, and several new voices in embassy are AI generated and bad.

It should be either a live actor or no voice. The only exception is background chatter. Ship computer should be voiced by a human.

Hmm, isn't it actually a contradiction that a ship's computer is supposed to be spoken by a human...

[vvvvvvvv]

now that we have AI voice technology

And it is awful. AI voices are recognizable, and several new voices in embassy are AI generated and bad.

It should be either a live actor or no voice. The only exception is background chatter. Ship computer should be voiced by a human.

Hmm, isn't it actually a contradiction that a ship's computer is supposed to be spoken by a human...

It isn't because humans do better job pretending to be a robot.

[Blaze1st]

Would you have banned Stephen Hawkings from doing a voice over? Clearly his voice was computer generated...

Cybernetics is in it's infancy. If one day someone installs a synthetic mouthpiece will they be banned?

What if a genuine general machine intelligence is created eventually and it wants to be an actor? Is it also not allowed to record voice lines in entertainment?

I suppose what I'm getting at here is that surely the important question is one of quality rather than method.

[vvvvvvvv]

Would you have banned Stephen Hawkings from doing a voice over?

No, because he's Stephen Hawking.

What if a genuine general machine intelligence is created

"IF". Look up "AI Label effect". AGI does no mean personhood. And in a human market AGI would have hard time getting employed.

Humans dislike AI content where they expect human creative output. AI voices work for ATC calls and background chatter. Not for a hero piece like ship computer.

[Blaze1st]

Stephen Hawkins' voice was entirely computer generated, he wouldn't necessarily play lines as himself naturally.

If you have the true definition of consciousness, many scientists would love to get in touch with you...

If the quality becomes so good that you don't notice the difference anymore, what argument will you base your blanket ban on then?

[vvvvvvvv]

If the quality becomes

Nope.

You may be thinking it is "rational" thing. I.e. person believes that "AI is bad" and decides "I will not watch/play is". Instead it automatic. Like the moment someone realizes it is "AI generated" there's drop in interest or loss of it. Automatically. The book no longer sounds interesting, the picture no longer looks good and so on. And it all goes into trash.

It is called AI label effect and it is situation where people assign more value to things they believe are made by humans. AI label effect is also the reason why some folks are against marking content as AI generated, because they know it will dock sales. Tim Sweeny complained about it. It also largely only matters for artistic work where human performance is expected. Nobody cares if a hammer is ai-generated, because it is not art.

So there's no need to ban anything, people will just see it as trash. So recording of Stephen Hawking will be more valuable then recording of a robot speaking exact same t hing through the same synthesizer.

And of course you can go online and read what people think about "AI slop".

The reason why I know that is because I dealt with huge amount of generated images and books. The AI label effect does not apply to all humans, but to a lot of them. It can also cost a game an award.

[Widow Maker]

The assumption that "AI" will get better is interesting. I highly doubt it, for a fairly insurmountable reason. What is called AI, is not intelligent. LLMs are not talking, they are guessing the next word, the text to speech software is guessing an infection. It isn't smart enough to know how to deliver a line.

If text to speech is replaced by real AI, that can read a whole script and interpret the meaning and tailor a performance, it won't be what we're talking about today. It will be something else entirely.

[Blaze1st]

That sounds like an issue with internal introspection rather than a fundamental issue with the technique itself.

Human history is littered with other examples; a hand woven jumper for example over a mass produced one. A difference in actual quality is not strictly required, the simple knowledge that one was hand made makes it more "valuable". That in my view is an invalid assessment of quality. The machine made jumper can be the superior product.

There are real life actors who would be upstaged by even a mechanical voice. That Chalamet dude from Dune who can't even articulate his lines for example, at least you would hear what the machine was saying so in that respect even the most robotic AI would be preferable over hearing nothing but mumbling.

This AI labelling effect might be real for sure, but it is illogical and should not be sited as a reason no to improve a given technique. Personally I don't care whether it's labelled AI or not, I will judge anything on its own merits. Deciding anything based on this AI labelling effect would be to my mind a subconscious bias which is something you need to train your brain not to do.

[-=FL=- UniversE]

I think this is more of a cost/value thingy...

X4 supports a lot of languages and hiring VAs for all of them is probably not the economically most interesting thing at the moment. And doing them all with LLMs, including the translations, will be a disaster. There is already enough backlash regarding poor translations in some languages, I guess Egosoft is not looking for more trouble in that area.

But who knows what the future brings...

[Alan Phipps]

We have been through a lot of this debate before. Some examples, whether generally supportive or some situational use or outright cautious about use of AI vs voice-acting.

[Blaze1st]

Many shades of grey...