More radio chatter (using AI generated voices) ? and station accouncer voiceline

[mr.WHO]

Since X4 and everyone else use some AI generated content - could we get more variety on radio chatter?

Currently I have a subjective feeling like there are 5-6 same radio chatter voice lines playing constantly in the loop, so it might be good idea to increase the amount of chatter voice lines.


While I'm one of peopel who have AI fatigue and in general doesn't like ongoing shoveling Ai generated content to everything - the radio chatter voicelines would be perfect for AI generation, since those are usually generic one liners that people say without much of emotions anyway (e.g. when you're requesting permision to dock for 1'000th time ).


Same could be for station announcer voicelines as well.

[vvvvvvvv]

Since X4 and everyone else use some AI generated content - could we get more variety on radio chatter?

Would rather not have this. AI content becomes recognizeable and irritating when you hear or see it a lot. Using it as some sort of voice altering filter is one thing, but basically this stuff was done in spacebourne and it does not exactly meet universal praise. Egosoft did add few new voices. Like you can hear that hysterically laughing boron in fights which definitely wasn't there before.

[LameFox]

I hate AI voices, it's like audio uncanny valley. Never sounds quite right even if you can't quite put your finger on why. And you don't even need that for radio chatter lines anyway. Unless you want it to make stuff up on the spot—but all the examples I've seen of that to date are awful.

The one thing I can think of that it might genuinely be useful for is to read out things like player names, named systems, named ships, etc. Having those pre-recorded is such a prohibitive effort that it's otherwise not voiced at all. Even games that try it only really give you a few hundred options, which sounds like a lot, but still means most of the time what you enter won't have a voiced line unless you intentionally follow the list.

As far as radio chatter goes, I think one thing they could do to improve it would be to have more short commentary. Think of HW2 radio chatter, where it's really quite brief and repetition makes sense. If you made up more of it with that, and then littered the insult-type comments in between, I think a lower volume of recorded lines could be stretched a lot further.

[MarStrMind]

I hate AI voices, it's like audio uncanny valley. Never sounds quite right even if you can't quite put your finger on why.

You clearly haven't heard premium voices from Amazon's Polly and/or ElevenLabs premium voices.

[vvvvvvvv]

You clearly haven't heard premium voices from Amazon's Polly and/or ElevenLabs premium voices.

He probably did, it is just the longer the exposure the better people get at spotting generated content. At a first glance it is not obvious, but becomes increasingly annoying later. I'd be happy with pure text an few voiced critical responses.

[adeine]

More chatter would be a great addition, especially on the radio and stations (both announcements and actual chatter among personnel). If it can be made relevant to actual game events this would be even better.

It can be difficult to pull off without getting repetitive/annoying but when done well it adds so much to the immersion.

[MarStrMind]

You clearly haven't heard premium voices from Amazon's Polly and/or ElevenLabs premium voices.

He probably did, it is just the longer the exposure the better people get at spotting generated content. At a first glance it is not obvious, but becomes increasingly annoying later. I'd be happy with pure text an few voiced critical responses.

I am using SayIntentions for my flight simulation, which is 100% AI voices. I can personally testify that they sound very good, close to human voices. At times, I was uncertain if that were actual AI voices.

[vvvvvvvv]

I am using SayIntentions for my flight simulation, which is 100% AI voices. I can personally testify that they sound very good, close to human voices. At times, I was uncertain if that were actual AI voices.

If you're voicing ATC messages or similar that's much lower bar than making a voiced character which should display emotions in believable way. Those are the situations that trigger uncanny valley.

All AI content becomes recognizable in time. A decent approach is using it as a voice changer, but if it is a TTS system which spews out voice lines based on text, I wouldn't want it at all. Obviously I wouldn't stop you from using a mod like that but in case of this game I'd prefer devs to do something else. AI voice is not a positive thing.

[MarStrMind]

It's a little more involved than simple TTS these days.

[vvvvvvvv]

It's a little more involved than simple TTS these days.

Try "spacebourne AI voices" in a search engine. See what users say about it.

AI content, when it is recognized by the user, instantly devalues the whole work, and makes it look cheap and poor quality. The longer people are exposed to generated content, the better they are at spotting it. That's the issue with it and that's the reason not to use it. Because no matter how high quality is the voice you used, if the user recognizes it, it'll make the final product appear as cheap junk. It is sort of like RPG Maker effect.

It happens because in creative works, value comes from human labor. AI is not a human. No human labor - no value. This is not an obvious thing. For the same reason humans value hand-crafted work higher, and for the same reason luxury cars have hand-crafted components.

The acceptable use seems to be at the line where it is a filter. Like AI voice changer, where a voice of the original is replaced. The situation when somebody "buys a style", i.e. trains a net to mimic a living painter, however, can ruffle many features, because the idea here to use a tool in order to avoid paying the dude. Which is not very ethical thing to do.

Likewise, if people realize that some ship is created from AI-generated sketch, that'll be enough for many people to become furious and abandon the game for good.

That's the primary reason to avoid AI content. Note that it only matters in user-facing parts. Nobody cares if the engine itself is written by a robot.

And that's the reason why I'm not excited about AI radio chatter idea.

The situation is a bit different in a training flight sim because that's less a work of art, and more of a training tool. There a robot may be more tolerable because the point is to listen to the ATC chatter and not for it to be real. But again given choice between AI voice and actor voice, I'd expect many would pick an actor voice.

[MarStrMind]

Haven't read all of it but I get your opinion. However many major enterprises are of different opinion, hence why AI voices are being used in a great number of use cases. And quite frankly, I am impressed at the state of how the different voices can sound (the ATC is SayIntentions is very close to human speech, you should watch demos of that on Youtube - well worth the money). I don't know which lines in X4 are actually AI-voiced, but I would be open to extract some lines from the game and try to run it through one of these voice processors and see what it sounds like.

[vvvvvvvv]

Haven't read all of it but I get your opinion. However many major enterprises are of different opinion, hence

I'm kinda over the AI honeymoon phase and observation I shared are something I experienced myself, plus they're not obvious. Like I said, I used generative AI a lot.

Major enterprises are not my concern. Egosoft and something like hollywood are in slightly different circumstances, and there's significant trail of dead "future" technologies.

[Axeface]

As far as I can tell good AI voicing is a question of curation, the tools are as good as the person using it or the time constraints they are under, as curation takes time.
Some of egosofts efforts with it are good, some are not. Hopefully they can nail down whatever problems they are having and start producing more quality. Also, the tech is obviously getting better everyday and whether you like it or not its going to be the norm very soon.

So yeh, more radio chatter would be great (which technically just means more npc voice 'sets').