Horizon Actor Ashly Burch Speaks on Sony’s AI Aloy Video

You may have seen a video earlier this week of Aloy, protagonist of PlayStation’s Horizon franchise, recreated with generative AI in a leaked Sony test demo. The video spurred a whirlwind of emotions from players and developers, in part because the Aloy bot has a robotic voice found in text-to-speech programs, rather than that of her longtime human voice actor, Ashly Burch. 

Despite not having her facial or voice data used for the bot, and Guerrilla telling her ahead of time that this wasn’t for anything actively in development, Burch admitted to feeling “worried about game performance as an art form.” In the video below, she touches on voice actors’ current fight for AI-related rights to voice acting, such as getting to consent to developers using replicas of their performances, and to know what those replicas are being used for.

Sony’s leaked video featured the genAI Aloy answering questions from Sony Interactive’s software engineering director Sharwan Raghiebardajal. Upon booting up Horizon Forbidden West, the replica describes the in-game beasts nearest the player and their ideal weak point. It’s all basic stuff that the player can do just playing Forbidden West, as you can scan beasts to see what they are and their most vital areas, and if you forget, the in-game glossary has you covered. 

But the footage comes amid a larger push for generative AI by major publishers, who see the technology as a boon in the development process, from design and art to voice acting. The SAG-AFTRA voice actor strike is close to going on for a full year, and the union recently said major companies like WB Games and Take-Two refuse to budge on using the technology to create voice replicas. 

This AI Aloy represents part of those actors’ fears: Sony and Guerrilla own Horizon, so they have the power to do as they wish with Aloy without informing Burch of the specifics, and that could possibly extend to her voice performance. Her greater concern is for actors in less secure positions than hers that could be greatly impacted by this, which she admits “hurts my heart. I love this industry and this art form so much and I want there to be a new generation of actors, and I want there to be so many more incredible game performances. I want to be able to continue doing this job, and if we don’t win, then that future is really compromised.” 

At time of writing, Sony’s yet to comment on the Aloy demo video, or discuss plans to incorporate anything like this tech into its PlayStation products. But the silence itself may speak volumes. 

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