8 ms·

Anger from voice actors as NSFW mods use AI deepfakes to replicate their voices

56 points by CharlesW 3y ago

oatmeal1 3y ago
There might be a Streisand Effect to this. Also, it's a bit hard to get morally outraged when if the mod devs had hired a voice actors that sounded like the Skyrim characters, it wouldn't be theft of voice, even though it had the same effect.
- dharmab 3y ago
  > Also, it's a bit hard to get morally outraged when if the mod devs had hired a voice actors that sounded like the Skyrim characters, it wouldn't be theft of voice, even though it had the same effect Tom Waits successfully sued Frito-Lay for using a Tom Waits soundalike in a commercial.
  - mc32 3y ago
    How do car dealers get away with using the voice of “ex-presidents” for their presidents’s day sales then? I mean, while not exactly the ex-presidents’s voices, they do mimic their voice styles and voice mannerisms. Typically ‘W’ and Clinton —though the ones for Lincoln and Washington is obviously imagined and presumably any rights would have expired.
    - HWR_14 3y ago
      1) Political figures have less likeness rights than actors 2) Obvious mimicry and impressions are okay. No one thinks it really is W or Clinton. 3) They are local ads, and thus no one notices
  - esperent 3y ago
    There's an important distinction here - these ads were impersonating Tom Waits himself. There's something called publicity rights that relates to a person's right to control their public likeness which is presumably what Waits sued over. Here, modders are impersonating a character played by a voice actor and the copyright on the character belongs to the game company, not the actor. Assuming the game company declines to enforce their copyright, it falls back to the actor to enforce their publicity rights. Which I'm not sure they can, since it's not them but rather a character they play. When modders hired soundalikes to extend a character, it was equivalent to finding a similar looking actor. Now, using AI, it's equivalent to using deepfake video. Legally, I assume there's a difference which might be important if the game company decided to sue the modders. But from the perspective of the voice actor, I don't think it matters. Their copyright isn't being infringed.
AlbertCory 3y ago
I can't speak for video games, but for any work with multiple characters (novels, commercials, etc.), voicing IS acting. Different characters have different voices, at different times depending on their emotional state. On the other hand, you could just have different voices for the different characters, which a book narrator can't do. I thought about doing that for my books, but it'd just be way too expensive.
- danielbln 3y ago
  Once the voice models allow for annotations (make this sarcastic, give a slow sigh here, make this sound sad and depressed) we'll see a lot of generated audio in audiobooks.
  - rcarr 3y ago
    Apple already released some audiobooks using AI generated voice actors. I don’t know if they were annotated, but the AI seemed to adjust tone correctly for the context in the snippets I listened to.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    I'm not saying it won't happen (after all, so much animation is crap and it's driven out the good stuff), but take a listen to the audio samples on my two books (searching Amazon for "Albert Cory" should find them). It's more than just following an annotation about sarcasm or sighing or sounding depressed. But yeah, that probably IS going to have to suffice for the vast majority of popular works.
    - danielbln 3y ago
      I don't know, even the base model from Elevenlabs is doing a pretty good job at imitating Maxwell Glick. I had it read out your comment, see here: https://sndup.net/q3r5/ https://sndup.net/q3r5/ Elevenlabs announced a new professional audio model with a more involved training process, I'm curious to see how good that one is, and how much control it gives you.
orbital-decay 3y ago
Modders have been hiring sound-alikes for the original Skyrim voice actors since forever. For example, male Khajiits in "Interesting NPCs" sound particularly convincing, this is clearly a work of another professional voice actor closely mimicking Andre Sogliuzzo's original work. As far as I'm aware, no one had any issues with that; using someone's voice without consent was and is an accepted practice. What has changed? It's the same with other game assets - textures, models, animation etc. In a mod, you just have to match the original game style closely, there's no other way. The common view in the game industry is that it's fine to do because modders usually don't make money. (at least they didn't before Bethesda and alikes let them...)
- joe-collins 3y ago
  It's the same ethical gap that dogs virtually any AI art project. In your example, some other actor did work in exchange for some satisfactory payment (possibly free). In the case of AI synthesis, actors' work is plagiarized without even compensation.
  - orbital-decay 3y ago
    > In your example, some other actor did work in exchange for some satisfactory payment (possibly free). In that example, someone else was paid instead of the original actor while using their voice, doing the job that neither the original voice actor nor copyright holder approved (in the context of NSFW mods the article is talking about). What makes it more ethical all of a sudden? What makes it less of a plagiarism? It seems to me that the actors in the article don't want their names to be associated with NSFW mods in particular (which is understandable), and the AI part is a red herring.
    - GalahiSimtam 3y ago
      This isn't a new debate in the modding community. There were all kind of opinions voiced. Robbie is not fond of AI voices, but he tracks NSFW mods because they are a natural concern. Anyways, it is the custom there that Nexusmods moderation reacts to suspected mod asset stealing and such an issue can be raised by any website user (as mod authors often leave and are no more around). However, for the voice cloning/impersonating, it requires a notification from the original VA, or some other credible confirmation that the particular VA is against this.
kgwxd 3y ago
But how do we know the angry responses aren't deepfakes?
lee101 3y ago
[dead]
PartiallyTyped 3y ago
Well, eventually we will reach the point where models don’t have to “mimic” anyone and can be guided. It really doesn’t matter. It will become so diluted that using human actors will be seen as special and not the other way around. Kinda like synthetic diamonds vs blood diamonds.
Ajay-p 3y ago
The danger here is that AI voice will continue to get better until one day...voice actors are simply not needed. Perhaps a better solution is for voice actors to license their voice to be used in AI. Imagine if you could license Morgan Freeman's voice for something, with plenty of rules and stipulations of course. The voice is recreated digitally and Mr. Freeman oversees the use of his voice.
- jug 3y ago
  I think it’s already happening for audiobooks to some extent. I’ve heard the latest voice AI and it’s extremely natural sounding with tonality and all. And audiobooks are an extreme case too with several hundreds of pages needing hiring a voice. Now they can just upload it and have the result in a few hours or so. Either the publisher themselves or the audiobook service. Hell, they could give you your favorite voice. Male? Female? Young? Old? Maybe you want a book on AI read by Steve Jobs? Here’s an audio AI example by ElevenLabs with celebrity voices. https://youtu.be/17_xLsqny9E https://youtu.be/17_xLsqny9E
- kromem 3y ago
  Think more that extended AI voice rights become part of standard contracts and video games with a 60 hour main story and voice acting have hundreds to thousands of tailored extended questlines powered by AI to extend the original performances across content no single player is ever intended to see all of. It's been pretty wild the past few years playing games and realizing the difference between today and tomorrow AI will have on gaming. Contract negotiation and licensing just needs to catch up.
- stuckinhell 3y ago
  It's not a danger, it's the dream for a huge number of creatives blocked by voice actor gatekeeping. The indie game development community is adopting AI voices extremely fast, because voice actors blew budgets or were difficult to work with. Many voice actors feel too good for videogames. I'm not surprised the gaming community is going hard and fast on AI voices, especially voice engines for the huge amount of text in lots of older games which would cost a fortune and a half to voice.
inglor_cz 3y ago
An interesting question: what counts as a "close enough" voice? Voices aren't that unique, at least from the perspective of a human with average hearing. I believe that by analyzing every single frequency of a perfect recording, you can determine the speaker fairly precisely, but for a normal human ear, plenty of people sound "almost alike".
ryaneager 3y ago
Do you need consent to use someone’s voice? I don’t think there is any legal protections for that…. Not that there shouldn’t be.

56 points by CharlesW 3y ago

There might be a Streisand Effect to this. Also, it's a bit hard to get morally outraged when if the mod devs had hired a voice actors that sounded like the Skyrim characters, it wouldn't be theft of voice, even though it had the same effect.

dharmab 3y ago
> Also, it's a bit hard to get morally outraged when if the mod devs had hired a voice actors that sounded like the Skyrim characters, it wouldn't be theft of voice, even though it had the same effect Tom Waits successfully sued Frito-Lay for using a Tom Waits soundalike in a commercial.
- mc32 3y ago
  How do car dealers get away with using the voice of “ex-presidents” for their presidents’s day sales then? I mean, while not exactly the ex-presidents’s voices, they do mimic their voice styles and voice mannerisms. Typically ‘W’ and Clinton —though the ones for Lincoln and Washington is obviously imagined and presumably any rights would have expired.
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    1) Political figures have less likeness rights than actors 2) Obvious mimicry and impressions are okay. No one thinks it really is W or Clinton. 3) They are local ads, and thus no one notices
- esperent 3y ago
  There's an important distinction here - these ads were impersonating Tom Waits himself. There's something called publicity rights that relates to a person's right to control their public likeness which is presumably what Waits sued over. Here, modders are impersonating a character played by a voice actor and the copyright on the character belongs to the game company, not the actor. Assuming the game company declines to enforce their copyright, it falls back to the actor to enforce their publicity rights. Which I'm not sure they can, since it's not them but rather a character they play. When modders hired soundalikes to extend a character, it was equivalent to finding a similar looking actor. Now, using AI, it's equivalent to using deepfake video. Legally, I assume there's a difference which might be important if the game company decided to sue the modders. But from the perspective of the voice actor, I don't think it matters. Their copyright isn't being infringed.

AlbertCory 3y ago

I can't speak for video games, but for any work with multiple characters (novels, commercials, etc.), voicing IS acting. Different characters have different voices, at different times depending on their emotional state. On the other hand, you could just have different voices for the different characters, which a book narrator can't do. I thought about doing that for my books, but it'd just be way too expensive.

danielbln 3y ago
Once the voice models allow for annotations (make this sarcastic, give a slow sigh here, make this sound sad and depressed) we'll see a lot of generated audio in audiobooks.
- rcarr 3y ago
  Apple already released some audiobooks using AI generated voice actors. I don’t know if they were annotated, but the AI seemed to adjust tone correctly for the context in the snippets I listened to.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  I'm not saying it won't happen (after all, so much animation is crap and it's driven out the good stuff), but take a listen to the audio samples on my two books (searching Amazon for "Albert Cory" should find them). It's more than just following an annotation about sarcasm or sighing or sounding depressed. But yeah, that probably IS going to have to suffice for the vast majority of popular works.
  - danielbln 3y ago
    I don't know, even the base model from Elevenlabs is doing a pretty good job at imitating Maxwell Glick. I had it read out your comment, see here: https://sndup.net/q3r5/ https://sndup.net/q3r5/ Elevenlabs announced a new professional audio model with a more involved training process, I'm curious to see how good that one is, and how much control it gives you.

orbital-decay 3y ago

Modders have been hiring sound-alikes for the original Skyrim voice actors since forever. For example, male Khajiits in "Interesting NPCs" sound particularly convincing, this is clearly a work of another professional voice actor closely mimicking Andre Sogliuzzo's original work. As far as I'm aware, no one had any issues with that; using someone's voice without consent was and is an accepted practice. What has changed? It's the same with other game assets - textures, models, animation etc. In a mod, you just have to match the original game style closely, there's no other way. The common view in the game industry is that it's fine to do because modders usually don't make money. (at least they didn't before Bethesda and alikes let them...)

joe-collins 3y ago
It's the same ethical gap that dogs virtually any AI art project. In your example, some other actor did work in exchange for some satisfactory payment (possibly free). In the case of AI synthesis, actors' work is plagiarized without even compensation.
- orbital-decay 3y ago
  > In your example, some other actor did work in exchange for some satisfactory payment (possibly free). In that example, someone else was paid instead of the original actor while using their voice, doing the job that neither the original voice actor nor copyright holder approved (in the context of NSFW mods the article is talking about). What makes it more ethical all of a sudden? What makes it less of a plagiarism? It seems to me that the actors in the article don't want their names to be associated with NSFW mods in particular (which is understandable), and the AI part is a red herring.
  - GalahiSimtam 3y ago
    This isn't a new debate in the modding community. There were all kind of opinions voiced. Robbie is not fond of AI voices, but he tracks NSFW mods because they are a natural concern. Anyways, it is the custom there that Nexusmods moderation reacts to suspected mod asset stealing and such an issue can be raised by any website user (as mod authors often leave and are no more around). However, for the voice cloning/impersonating, it requires a notification from the original VA, or some other credible confirmation that the particular VA is against this.

kgwxd 3y ago

But how do we know the angry responses aren't deepfakes?

lee101 3y ago

[dead]

PartiallyTyped 3y ago

Well, eventually we will reach the point where models don’t have to “mimic” anyone and can be guided. It really doesn’t matter. It will become so diluted that using human actors will be seen as special and not the other way around. Kinda like synthetic diamonds vs blood diamonds.

Ajay-p 3y ago

The danger here is that AI voice will continue to get better until one day...voice actors are simply not needed. Perhaps a better solution is for voice actors to license their voice to be used in AI. Imagine if you could license Morgan Freeman's voice for something, with plenty of rules and stipulations of course. The voice is recreated digitally and Mr. Freeman oversees the use of his voice.

jug 3y ago
I think it’s already happening for audiobooks to some extent. I’ve heard the latest voice AI and it’s extremely natural sounding with tonality and all. And audiobooks are an extreme case too with several hundreds of pages needing hiring a voice. Now they can just upload it and have the result in a few hours or so. Either the publisher themselves or the audiobook service. Hell, they could give you your favorite voice. Male? Female? Young? Old? Maybe you want a book on AI read by Steve Jobs? Here’s an audio AI example by ElevenLabs with celebrity voices. https://youtu.be/17_xLsqny9E https://youtu.be/17_xLsqny9E
kromem 3y ago
Think more that extended AI voice rights become part of standard contracts and video games with a 60 hour main story and voice acting have hundreds to thousands of tailored extended questlines powered by AI to extend the original performances across content no single player is ever intended to see all of. It's been pretty wild the past few years playing games and realizing the difference between today and tomorrow AI will have on gaming. Contract negotiation and licensing just needs to catch up.
stuckinhell 3y ago
It's not a danger, it's the dream for a huge number of creatives blocked by voice actor gatekeeping. The indie game development community is adopting AI voices extremely fast, because voice actors blew budgets or were difficult to work with. Many voice actors feel too good for videogames. I'm not surprised the gaming community is going hard and fast on AI voices, especially voice engines for the huge amount of text in lots of older games which would cost a fortune and a half to voice.

inglor_cz 3y ago

An interesting question: what counts as a "close enough" voice? Voices aren't that unique, at least from the perspective of a human with average hearing. I believe that by analyzing every single frequency of a perfect recording, you can determine the speaker fairly precisely, but for a normal human ear, plenty of people sound "almost alike".

ryaneager 3y ago

Do you need consent to use someone’s voice? I don’t think there is any legal protections for that…. Not that there shouldn’t be.