AI is at the center of the ongoing strikes in Hollywood, as writers and actors are concerned over how studios will take advantage of the rapidly-advancing technology moving forward. Those concerns are also bleeding into the world of video games, specifically in the voice actor community.
Last week, we shared the controversy in the Skyrim community, where dozens of voice actors discovered AI-generated NSFW Skyrim mods using synthetic versions of their actual vocal performances. The characters in these mods sound like the real-life actors, but they’re saying lines the voice actors never actually performed — often in pornographic contexts. Many of these mods are hosted on the mod distributor Nexus Mods.
Now, Victoria Atkin — who played Evie Frye in 2015’s Assassin’s Creed syndicate — has discovered that her voice is also being used in AI-generated pornographic mods on Nexus Mods.
Update on this… AI just stole my voice for this role. @sagaftra @WGAEast @WGAWest #Unionstrong #videogames #performancecapture #eviefrye #AssassinsCreed @assassinscreed @Ubisoft @latimes @Variety @DEADLINE @IGN https://t.co/IUGta4Pssh
— Victoria Atkin (@VictoriaAtkin) July 15, 2023
IGN spoke with Atkin, alongside Tim Friedlander, the founder and president of the National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA), about AI’s continuing threat to the voice actor community.
“I was kind of shocked, really, that it’s been used without my say, without my consent, it’s just out there,” Atkin said of the moment she learned how her voice was being used. “To think that my living could be taken away because somebody could copy it and modify it and make me say whatever they want me to say, it’s extremely frightening… It’s a threat all around. It’s kind of like this invisible enemy that we’re fighting right now.”
To join in the fight against that invisible enemy, Atkin went to the picket line for the WGA strike last month. Atkin and Friedlander explained that many of the issues writers and actors are striking over in the television and film industries also impact interactive entertainment.
“AI is a general threat to labor, and voice actors and writers are labor,” Friedlander said. “We are basically replacing humans with AI and digital technology that can do our job for free, and it doesn’t benefit the voice actors, it doesn’t benefit the writers… It only benefits the very top part of these companies.”
A Lack of Regulations on AI-Generated Content
Since the threat of AI is relatively new, Atkin said that many of the contracts she’s signed throughout her career are not up to date. For example, the contract she signed with Ubisoft for Assassin’s Creed was inked nearly a decade ago, well before fears of AI were under consideration. This means many contracts contain no language addressing permissions for AI content.
As a temporary fix, NAVA released an addendum earlier this year for actors to include in their contracts. The document has companies agree that the voice recording and motion capture performance will not be used for the creation of synthetic voices or machine learning. But Friedlander said widespread change needs to happen in a more official capacity.
“Right now there’s no contract protection and that needs to be in our contracts, very specifically to address AI and machine learning… Many voice actors have been doing this for 10 or 20 years, we have hundreds and hundreds of hours of audio that’s out there freely to be used and for machine learning to train our replacements, to train these synthetic voices that could potentially be used to replace us.”
Friedlander said there’s no software right now that can track voices as biometric data. So, it’s virtually impossible for any actor to keep up with all the instances of AI-generated content featuring their voice. For actors like Atkin who have been in the industry for years, that makes the lack of regulations on AI-generated content all the more concerning.
“I’ve done so many games I’ve lost count, and there’s so much of my voice out there that I would never be able to keep track of… There’s credits that are not even on my IMDb that I’ve done. It’s just frightening… It’s kind of dangerous what they can do with it without my say.”
IGN reached out to Nexus Mods for comment on this, but did not hear back in time for publication. When IGN reached out to Nexus Mods previously regarding the NSFW Skyrim mods, a spokesperson linked to the site’s current policy on AI content, which reads in part, “AI-generated mod content is not against our rules, but may be removed if we receive a credible complaint from an affected creator/rights holder.”
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.