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The use of AI in video game development has become an increasingly hot topic over the past few months. Voice actors are currently on strike as they seek protections from their images and voices being used to replace them in the future. After Sony’s disastrous tech demo of their Aloy AI avatar, Baldur’s Gate 3 voice actor Samantha Béart, who portrayed fan-favorite Karlach, didn’t mince words about what they think would happen to companies who used AI to cut costs at the expense of creativity.

“Essentially, [CEOs pushing AI] just want to save money,” Béart said in an interview. “In the long term, it’ll destroy their reputation, their company, everything.” The short-term goal of cutting costs, the actor says, would come at the expense of the final product, which would ultimately hurt the developer in the long term. Actors need a sense of wonder and excitement to bring their characters to life - something an AI can never replicate.

As video game voice actors continue to seek protections from AI being trained on their data and, potentially, replacing them in the future, Béart argues that there isn’t a future where actors back down from that particular fight. “It’s just not going to happen,” they said. “Why would you do it? You’ve just signed your way out of any sort of job or career… We have an industry of highly artistic people who’ve had a calling to do this stuff, and then you’ve got these people with money, who don’t play games, who see it as an easy way to make a return on investment.”

“Those two things are oil and water.”

This seems to echo the thoughts of Aloy’s actor, Ashly Burch, who said that she feared a future where actors with the drive and passion for video game performances struggle to find space due to AI making their jobs obsolete. It certainly doesn’t seem like something that will happen anytime soon, but – at least from the perspective of the actors, it seems to be looming in the future.

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