Verbais030

I want to first briefly acknowledge that modding is a huge part of what has kept Bethesda's community alive, thriving, and connected. We all know that Bethesda games owe at least some of their near-eternal success to dedicated volunteers, working for donations or often even free, pushing the limits of these games with their creative ideas and taking them in completely new directions. As the modding community has grown larger and stronger, and technology has advanced, some pretty amazing things have become possible. That said, I think it's important to discuss the topic of AI and its use in modding. This morning, a new mod was published on the Nexus mods page called Andreja's New Voice - Female V from Cyberpunk 2077. This mod replaces over 4,000 lines of voice dialogue from the voice actress for Andreja - Cissy Jones - with an AI-created rendition of those same lines intended to be voiced by Cherami Leigh (the voice actress responsible for "female V;" the female voice variant of the playable protagonist in Cyberpunk 2077. The modder claims to have used the publicly-available Retrieval-based Voice Conversion, or RVC, to accomplish this. To be clear: This is indeed a very creative use of a still rather cutting-edge technology, and a showcase for what current-generation AI is capable of. Such a mod would not have been possible just a few years ago. That being said, the decision to create and publish such a mod opens a door to a variety of ethical considerations which are imperative to talk about and understand. Voice actors/actresses are a vital part of modern game development. They're responsible for arguably one of the most important parts of any game that includes voice acting: The personality of the characters you're meant to become invested in, the tone and delivery of the entire story, and the immersion of the player into the game world. These individuals put in hard work to maximize the impact of those elements for the final project, and are rightly paid to do so. When a modder utilizes technology to artificially generate voice talent in a game, it could be seen as quite literally stealing another person's voice. Cherami Leigh is a professional voice actress who did not consent and was not compensated for the use of her voice and likeness in this mod. Her real voice has been reconstructed to deliver lines and say things she never actually said. There are some counter-arguments that can immediately come into play here. One of them is that this mod is free and optional, both of which are true. You do not need to replace Cissy Jones's voice in your game, and indeed, the mod is only available to the fraction of players on PC anyway. The problem with this argument is that it is not considering the actress whose voice was used without permission to create the content. Even if it is free and optional, it is still a creative work that harvests the most important tool of another - in this case, a voice actress' voice - without their consent. Another counter-argument is that the quality of this technology is still not perfected enough to the point that all 4,000+ lines of dialogue are delivered in a believable way, or that there's no issue because it's clear that Cherami Leigh could have delivered the lines without the distinct "AI mistakes" sound in some of the lines. The reality is that this is exactly the time where we need to analyze this sort of content, because in a few more years we may be at the point where these technology limitations are no longer a concern. We are rapidly reaching a point where AI-generated likenesses of other individuals, either visual or audio in nature, are becoming indistinguishable from the real person. The use of AI in modding to recreate the likeness of an unaware, uncompensated, and unconsenting person is unethical, and as modders, a line needs to be drawn somewhere. As many of us recently witnessed, Nexus is no stranger to drawing lines based on ethics, and this raises the question of what other areas of modding need to be brought into question. This is one such area. I lastly want to point out that I am not of the belief that the author of this mod developed it with any sort of negative intent in mind. Again, it is a very powerful and interesting mod that utilizes advancing technology to create something that the community would not have even believed possible in somewhat recent years. However, as the mod author states in the description, the mod "showcases a proof of concept" of what this technology is capable of, and as interesting as it may be, the ethical implications of this type of technology need to be seriously called into question before allowing it to become widespread.