Please don't. Or at least not until there are very well negotiated guardrails put in place so that actors' (or indeed anyone's) voices and likenesses aren't stolen without 1) appropriate compensation and 2) protection to ensure voices can't be used in perpetuity without their consent. If it's gonna be done it has to be done ethically.
Actor Patrick Keeffe has a very understandable reaction in this video below (this is in the context of the SAG-AFTRA strikes and shows an AI generating his voice based on training from a single video):
www.instagram.com
Watch it - I think Johnny SIlverhand would agree with him 100%...
Also, I just don't think art is art unless there's a beating heart behind it. If we're talking about AI in the way it was used during "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" with Nic Cage (they used AI for his younger self), then assuming Cage was fairly compensated and the use of AI was limited, limited, to that one project, then I think that's ok. Plus, the movie was still actually written and acted by people. Humans being at the heart of a creative project, driving everything, with AI being used as a tool for limited tasks like that is one thing... but having ACE generating the writing and voices and acting feels like it's cutting too much humanity out of our creativity, IMO.
This is a rapidly developing issue and my views on this are constantly evolving - but this is how I feel at the moment. There's a lot about AI that's extremely exciting to me - I think there's a lot of potential good there - but I have to say it's a little disturbing how many gamers are instantly enamored by ACE, without any consideration to artists. Looking at ACE, as it's used there, feels very dystopian. And putting that into a Cyberpunk game (which is criticising dystopia) feels like the most obvious real-world corpo thing you could do.
Plus it doesn't feel like the right genre of game anyway - Cyberpunk 2077 has an over-arching story. It's well written. Whereas ACE looks more appropriate for something like a life-simulator sandbox type thing. Again, though, if ACE is gonna be used in any game, still gotta have those guardrails sorted out first.
Actor Patrick Keeffe has a very understandable reaction in this video below (this is in the context of the SAG-AFTRA strikes and shows an AI generating his voice based on training from a single video):
Patrick Keeffe 🔜 PAX East on Instagram: "We can’t stop. This isn’t just about art for Voice actors. Most of us make our living off of commercial work. This is going to extend into customer service fields as well. You’ll never talk to a real human aga
20K likes, 344 comments - thatgreygentleman on August 5, 2023: "We can’t stop. This isn’t just about art for Voice actors. Most of us make our living off of commercial work. This is going to extend..."
www.instagram.com
Also, I just don't think art is art unless there's a beating heart behind it. If we're talking about AI in the way it was used during "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" with Nic Cage (they used AI for his younger self), then assuming Cage was fairly compensated and the use of AI was limited, limited, to that one project, then I think that's ok. Plus, the movie was still actually written and acted by people. Humans being at the heart of a creative project, driving everything, with AI being used as a tool for limited tasks like that is one thing... but having ACE generating the writing and voices and acting feels like it's cutting too much humanity out of our creativity, IMO.
This is a rapidly developing issue and my views on this are constantly evolving - but this is how I feel at the moment. There's a lot about AI that's extremely exciting to me - I think there's a lot of potential good there - but I have to say it's a little disturbing how many gamers are instantly enamored by ACE, without any consideration to artists. Looking at ACE, as it's used there, feels very dystopian. And putting that into a Cyberpunk game (which is criticising dystopia) feels like the most obvious real-world corpo thing you could do.
Plus it doesn't feel like the right genre of game anyway - Cyberpunk 2077 has an over-arching story. It's well written. Whereas ACE looks more appropriate for something like a life-simulator sandbox type thing. Again, though, if ACE is gonna be used in any game, still gotta have those guardrails sorted out first.
Oh I can already imagine what the modding community would be using this for. Would make Jig-Jig street look like a PG13 establishment in comparison to what they'd cook up with this 
100% agreed. I believe the era of "endless dynamically generated content", "AI NPCs", infinite procedural worlds,...are just the ways players (want to) stimulate their ever-distracted attention. It's the same with social media, etc... - short attention-grabbing content, infinite scrolling,...
I believe that's one of the reasons why people hated CP so much - because they wanted the game to fulfil every single one of their expectations and more - to provide them with anything they could've possibly ever wanted or liked.
While more lifelike 'extras' in the background would be good. It would make games feel very generic if used for main characters.
One of the biggest arguments against it is that you will need a Nvida GPU to use it. And when it launches, you'll all most certainly need a current gen Nvida GPU as well. And no support for consoles...
If only it was an AMD creation...
One of the biggest arguments against it is that you will need a Nvida GPU to use it. And when it launches, you'll all most certainly need a current gen Nvida GPU as well. And no support for consoles...
If only it was an AMD creation...
It looks like an interesting idea worth exploring in the modding scene, but practical uses may be like 10-20 years away. I could imagine the new ways to make video game dialogue would be based of not giving characters ANY pre-created answers to any question, but just what they're able to know about the world and quests, and then to be allowed to give an examples of what humans would be able to come up with such knowledge.
Currently it looks like the VR games, most gaming population simply doesn't have the hardware to run these sorts of things, as many games have stayed in more traditional way.
I think we have to wait at least 1 or 2 more console generations to add these computer chips which would be designed around generating AI given content.
I mean when first 3D games came out, like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, we had no idea how long it would take to perfect that kind of 3D world rendering... in fact even to this day we're still not fluidly able to maintain 3D worlds without all sorts of quirks.
To see real working and practical AI generated dialogues (in pre-generated quests) we'd likely have to go to year 2040-2050, and then to have AI be able to actually generate quests that are worthy of exploring add another 10-20 years.
At that point in time, instead of worrying about the content of the game or graphics, the biggest competition will likely be in how interesting the rules are in a said game, the actual core of what makes good gameplay and interesting mechanics. You take those out and I think we're going to see a bunch of clones of similar dialogues, all voice AI's sounding about the same with the 1 000 different AI sound models, with most conversations being just like the demo shows, just a sliding bars to determine which character has more humor or less toxicity or is more helpful.
Certainly worth exploring this and maybe even adding it to something less forced role, like having able to have chats with randomly generated NPC's and allowing them to tell their life stories, I think that's what we'll see them first used.
So I wouldn't rush to expect this to emerge as the new standard in future games just yet, but we'll likely see some implementations of it, while still maintaining story focused narratives.
For this to be any practical, I think games would have to be much-much larger to be able to develop entire zones with people with certain attitude, events that people be able to refer to. It would take an entirely different approach to quests and how they're given. So that's why I don't see this technology taking off any time soon.
Look good, just like VR, and how many times that has been tried, along with 3D movies, and they always seem to fail eventually, before resurfacing 5 to 10 years later.
I'd say just wait till year 2040, expect to pay like 200€ for this sort of game that would have to require at least 50 million copies sold... and this would just be the entry cost, with likely monthly subscription for even a single player game that would require a constant stream of 100 employees working their butts off, and building up new narratives, fixing old ones, generating all sorts of reasons to take on these adventures etc. Those kind of games would be so large that there would be stores within stores. You'd be able to make your own life in a video game, building up content for others to consume etc. It would take similar scope that went from building Doom with 5 people, into creating Doom with 200 people, developing real world AI generated world with infinite activity would take up to 8 000 people.
Remember that this is all just a prototype in a LAB environment, with the whole video being edited likely multiple times to take out hiccups, and to actually publish this could've taken 200 re-shoots of the AI code, to finally get a simple NPC to work as noodle salesman.
This current version of conversation AI will likely end up like Nintendo's VR console, like a cool gimmick demo, which causes nausea and comes with only a red color display and you have to strap your face to this console.
Maybe in next Cyberpunk, we could see this in use in random NPC dialogues, maybe even added to Cyberpunk 2077 NPC's later, but nothing more. And these wouldn't be more interesting than "Have you heard the news? What happened in Crystal Palace... that's horrible." where other NPC responds to "Crystal Palace? Some rich a****** got killed?", first guy saying "Yeah, they said it was some hitmen who worked for MiliTech.", 2nd guy saying "Oh Militech? That's where my father used to work. They're such great guys.", conversation gets back and forward and both characters look like Skyrim NPC's and there's no big expressions on what they say, there's probably not going to be some kind of conflict with NPC's etc. It's just generally not going to be interesting plotwise. It would be only interesting because it's AI giving the dialogue, not because it's going to offer any insight that already wouldn't be able to be given by pre-recorded scene.
And this one is big reason for why we wouldn't see this taking place for long time:
Why use generative AI that offers more work, when you could create a special interaction with just 1/10th or 1/100th of the work? People who play video games aren't going to replay the same 100h games more than 1 or 2 time, most people don't even complete their games, so doing this generative AI thing would be just a gigantic money sink, especially open world games. Maybe some indie games with far less budget would be able to create this clutter that pretends to be content to offer to people to interact with, but trying to scale this to anything meaningful, especially with modern hardware is just fools errand.
TLDR: Like I said, it's likely to arrive, but it's going to be far less impressive than what's advertised, and it'll take generations to mature. The entry cost is going to be very high, and gaming already is very exclusive hobby which many aren't able to afford today.
Currently it looks like the VR games, most gaming population simply doesn't have the hardware to run these sorts of things, as many games have stayed in more traditional way.
I think we have to wait at least 1 or 2 more console generations to add these computer chips which would be designed around generating AI given content.
I mean when first 3D games came out, like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, we had no idea how long it would take to perfect that kind of 3D world rendering... in fact even to this day we're still not fluidly able to maintain 3D worlds without all sorts of quirks.
To see real working and practical AI generated dialogues (in pre-generated quests) we'd likely have to go to year 2040-2050, and then to have AI be able to actually generate quests that are worthy of exploring add another 10-20 years.
At that point in time, instead of worrying about the content of the game or graphics, the biggest competition will likely be in how interesting the rules are in a said game, the actual core of what makes good gameplay and interesting mechanics. You take those out and I think we're going to see a bunch of clones of similar dialogues, all voice AI's sounding about the same with the 1 000 different AI sound models, with most conversations being just like the demo shows, just a sliding bars to determine which character has more humor or less toxicity or is more helpful.
Certainly worth exploring this and maybe even adding it to something less forced role, like having able to have chats with randomly generated NPC's and allowing them to tell their life stories, I think that's what we'll see them first used.
So I wouldn't rush to expect this to emerge as the new standard in future games just yet, but we'll likely see some implementations of it, while still maintaining story focused narratives.
For this to be any practical, I think games would have to be much-much larger to be able to develop entire zones with people with certain attitude, events that people be able to refer to. It would take an entirely different approach to quests and how they're given. So that's why I don't see this technology taking off any time soon.
Look good, just like VR, and how many times that has been tried, along with 3D movies, and they always seem to fail eventually, before resurfacing 5 to 10 years later.
I'd say just wait till year 2040, expect to pay like 200€ for this sort of game that would have to require at least 50 million copies sold... and this would just be the entry cost, with likely monthly subscription for even a single player game that would require a constant stream of 100 employees working their butts off, and building up new narratives, fixing old ones, generating all sorts of reasons to take on these adventures etc. Those kind of games would be so large that there would be stores within stores. You'd be able to make your own life in a video game, building up content for others to consume etc. It would take similar scope that went from building Doom with 5 people, into creating Doom with 200 people, developing real world AI generated world with infinite activity would take up to 8 000 people.
Remember that this is all just a prototype in a LAB environment, with the whole video being edited likely multiple times to take out hiccups, and to actually publish this could've taken 200 re-shoots of the AI code, to finally get a simple NPC to work as noodle salesman.
This current version of conversation AI will likely end up like Nintendo's VR console, like a cool gimmick demo, which causes nausea and comes with only a red color display and you have to strap your face to this console.
Maybe in next Cyberpunk, we could see this in use in random NPC dialogues, maybe even added to Cyberpunk 2077 NPC's later, but nothing more. And these wouldn't be more interesting than "Have you heard the news? What happened in Crystal Palace... that's horrible." where other NPC responds to "Crystal Palace? Some rich a****** got killed?", first guy saying "Yeah, they said it was some hitmen who worked for MiliTech.", 2nd guy saying "Oh Militech? That's where my father used to work. They're such great guys.", conversation gets back and forward and both characters look like Skyrim NPC's and there's no big expressions on what they say, there's probably not going to be some kind of conflict with NPC's etc. It's just generally not going to be interesting plotwise. It would be only interesting because it's AI giving the dialogue, not because it's going to offer any insight that already wouldn't be able to be given by pre-recorded scene.
And this one is big reason for why we wouldn't see this taking place for long time:
Why use generative AI that offers more work, when you could create a special interaction with just 1/10th or 1/100th of the work? People who play video games aren't going to replay the same 100h games more than 1 or 2 time, most people don't even complete their games, so doing this generative AI thing would be just a gigantic money sink, especially open world games. Maybe some indie games with far less budget would be able to create this clutter that pretends to be content to offer to people to interact with, but trying to scale this to anything meaningful, especially with modern hardware is just fools errand.
TLDR: Like I said, it's likely to arrive, but it's going to be far less impressive than what's advertised, and it'll take generations to mature. The entry cost is going to be very high, and gaming already is very exclusive hobby which many aren't able to afford today.
I wonder...
Do the facial animations adapt accordingly?
I could be wrong, but from what I see in the video, there is no facial animation at all, except of the mouth. While in theory, they should change accordingly.
Because again, thanks to JALI, facial animations in Cyberpunk are outstanding and above all, facial animations/expressions change accordingly with the language selected (I know, I know... I praise JALI, but it's an awesome tech^^).
(if ACE only work in english, it's even worse... Just need to take a look to Starfield to see how animations/lips synch are bad in other languages than english^^).
Do the facial animations adapt accordingly?
I could be wrong, but from what I see in the video, there is no facial animation at all, except of the mouth. While in theory, they should change accordingly.
Because again, thanks to JALI, facial animations in Cyberpunk are outstanding and above all, facial animations/expressions change accordingly with the language selected (I know, I know... I praise JALI, but it's an awesome tech^^).
(if ACE only work in english, it's even worse... Just need to take a look to Starfield to see how animations/lips synch are bad in other languages than english^^).
As LeKill3rFou indicated - this probably isn't ready for AAA stuff yet. Especially not the big time games that focus on being bleeding edge with their graphics like Cyberpunk 2077.
To me this tool seems great, at the moment, for two things... modders and smaller studios on a budget.
To me this tool seems great, at the moment, for two things... modders and smaller studios on a budget.
I don't think it would prevent voice actors from getting work. There would still be scripted events in games. I think this would be tech that would most likely be used to add depth and flavor to NPCs, give main characters more side content or reactivity, etc.
I think it depends on what sort of agreements get negotiated and if we end up with any sort of laws to protect us. I have quite a bit of faith that CDPR would do the right thing and go for a win-win for everyone - good script-writing and acting are two of the biggest strengths of their games and I just can’t imagine them abandoning that.
But to give a preview of how other companies might behave (especially much larger ones that are more bean-counter oriented than dev-oriented at the higher levels), here’s what the AMPTP allegedly offered SAG:
“This ‘groundbreaking’ AI proposal that they gave us yesterday, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation. So if you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again.” - Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s chief negotiator (source)
An AMPTP spokesman quickly went, no no no that’s not what we meant, afterwards, but my cynic-o-meter nearly broke at that point.
Like Keanu Reeves said: “The people who are paying you for your art would rather not pay you. They’re actively seeking a way around you, because artists are tricky. Humans are messy.”
And yet, despite all of the coolest art programs out there, despite the fact that robots have been around to weld things for nearly 100 years, despite machines that can do the job of dozens of human farmers existing for well over 100 years...humans are still hired at every turn. I think it's perfectly normal for people to fear that a machine will somehow replace them, but there's simply no way that a machine will ever be able to produce something human because they're not human.
So, whenever a new machine is created, of course it will mean that people take advantage of it, but it will only ever be able to make mass production more efficient. Every time art is mass produced, it becomes relatively sterile and ineffectual, and a human touch is needed to give things that creative spark again. A game using only AI, no matter how advanced, is going to quickly start sounding and operating like every other game in existence.
In order to create something truly unique, human actors will be hired to create actual scenes, dialogue, and nuanced performances. AI will probably be quickly overused, and then relegated to moments where a game would normally have NPCs repeat the same lines over and over.
I mean... there are far fewer farmers and probably welders nowadays too. If you can do X with fewer bodies you don't need as many bodies to do it. Unless demand goes up. Once upon a time the Ancient Greeks went off to war. Quite often, as history would have it. Upon returning home they all manned the fields.
I can understand someone working in applicable fields being concerned about the looming potential for Skynet. I jest a bit, of course. The point remains.
Hmmph. Why not? There are already cases where the AI magic is fast approaching human capability. It's already superior in some cases. Hence the push for it.
Personally, I'm not so impressed with that demo video. The voice-overs stand out. They're all dull and robotic sounding. If a digital avatar in a game sounded that way, no matter how insignificant, I'd notice it. It would bother me. So... there might be a ways to go yet.
I'm also not quite so blown away by the whole Chatbot concept. It's neat, sure. It's likely reliable enough for less informative conversation already. It's less impressive for anything informative. Given the goal is believable conversation. Not technically sound, factual information. I don't know if they've solved the problem where the magical AI Chatbot spits out convincing sounding bullshit or outdated info yet.
Although, this is presumably less problematic for video games.As I understand it this is kind of where it sits now. It's not completely hands-off, so to speak. The AI spits out it's result then manual passes are often done for fine tuning and tweaks. Adjusting some sliders here or there. Still.... that's where it's at now. It's not out of the question for it to get better and better to a point where the AI spits out a result and the "done" label gets slapped on it. That or the more frugal and/or less financially stable architects of content slap done on the imperfect AI output.
"HOPE THAT CDPROJECT RED ADOPTS NVIDIA ACE"
Although would love it too, pretty sure they won't because of reasons.Am very psyched about this new technology. Here's another one that's text only for CE.
Pretty much what i was gonna say, its probably true for most industrial jobs nowdays. Less then half the people produce x5 as much thanks to robots and machines becoming "smarter". It could really turn into a problem in the future if this keeps up..
Yeeeah, the farmer analogy doesn’t offer any reassurance does it? Actors aren’t just doing artsy jobs and main acting roles; it’s all sorts of things. You’ve got commercials, small roles in TV/movies/games, providing voices for your mobile operator‘s answering machine, your rail network, sex noises for CP77 (thank you Paweł), etc. The vast majority of actors are not making millions, and of the ones that are working regularly as actors, most of them are working pay-check to pay-check, doing this type of acting gig and that, trying to pay their bills.
Did you watch the Instagram video I posted? That‘s what AI can do now. You could absolutely replace that actor for that type of voice acting gig. I don't think a company like MacDonalds really cares if their advert is a work of art or not, and I doubt every massive videogame studio appreciates the value of actors the way CDPR probably does. That’s why we need to put the legal guardrails in place now. We can speculate all we want on what may or may not be further down the road, but in the meantime we have to react to the deer that’s just jumped out in front of the car.
This.
Science is not advancing at a constant pace, it's exponential. You can't base your opinion on AI replacing humans on the last 100 years of robots not completely replacing humans. Things that almost seemed like distant science fiction a decade ago are happening now. AI is the next big step humanity will take, it will have a deep effect on everyone and it will be here sooner rather than later.
Actors are right to be worried. Legal frameworks around AI is something we should be putting in place now. Not leaving a void until people have been irreparably affected. We've made that mistake too many times already.
I'm no actor and my particular sector would likely be one of the last to be impacted but I am 200% with you on this.
(Sorry for the delayed response. Real life and such.)
I'm totally behind the concern of what AI can do if it's utilized without caution. I'm actually strongly in favor of not using AI, or allowing any form of unfettered development. I, personally, think that developing AIs will ultimately be a huge mistake, despite the obvious gains we'll achieve with it.
But, I simply don't think that AI will ever be able to damage art. Video games, films, novels, etc. will continue to include purely human pursuits, even if AI is involved. There will still be 100% human ventures topping the charts. AI, regardless of all it's wild potential, is still nothing but a tool. Like any other major advance in technology, people are simply scared of what they don't know. That's just the way the universe works.
Or, another way for me to present my argument:
AI won't destroy human art. If AI does become prevalent enough to be a "threat", in any capacity, we're not going to be worried about video games.