An interesting story today folks. With the new DLC for The Witcher 3 coming up CD Projekt Red provided the interesting information that the voice we will be hearing from Geralt in the expansion will actually be partially AI generated, though before you get your pitchforks out hear me out on this one.
The Polish voice actor for Geralt in the games, Jacek Rozenek, had a stroke in 2019 which he did recover from but left a permanent change on his voice, meaning that when it came time to reprise his Geralt role for this DLC he unfortunately was unable to fully reproduce the middle aged Geralt voice, which would normally spell doom for re-using the same voice actor. Despite this however the company wanted to keep using Jacek’s talent as he had the cadence and mannerisms of Geralt down to a T, so they went to a third party AI company that specialised in voice technology. Here, with the actor’s permission, they modified the tone and speed of his voice to make it sound as though it was his original performance from all those years ago so that it would make sense for the context of this being Geralt in the middle of the events of the Witcher 3.
Whilst I am certainly not AI’s biggest fan and I highly discourage its usage in any creative aspect this is one of those examples that shows to me that the technology actually has a benefit that makes sense for its usage. The original actor was consulted and approved of its usage, it was for an extreme circumstance that meant Jacek could still get to voice the role he is known for, it made context for the game itself to make him sound younger/more like his original self and it meant that an actor actually retained work rather than was replaced for the usage of this new technology. Obviously the end result will speak for itself and I’ll be interested to see if people will spot the change when playing the actual DLC and don’t know this story, but still it’s nice to see an actual good story regarding AI for once. Now let’s just see if something like this happens in future… it’s always a slippery slope after all.
That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.