What’s the difference between AI voices versus human voice actors and procedurally generated maps versus hand drawn?
Everyone will have to make their choices when it comes to AI, but it’s not like AI voices is even close to the first thing we have in our games that are AI or AI-ish. Anything that is procedurally anything is human work that didn’t happen. Synth music too.
Also, AI voices have been used to wonderful effect in past games. Rebel Galaxy? If I remember right much of the dialogue in that game was AI, although the secret sauce was probably to have the dialogue be in a language most people don’t understand, so it doesn’t feel wrong.
Depends on what the comparison constraints are I guess. AI used for voices and art tends to sample other voices/work, sometimes without attribution. At the very least, AI voicework creates something that directly stands in for work a human would do and for which they would receive a credit.
Procgen for levels or maps is usually just an algorithm, albeit often a complex one. But the programmer knows what the algorithm is, can tweak it, and has to provide it with specific inputs and constraints. Procgen in general is more of a tool to extend the programmer’s reach as it were, little different than all of the plug-ins and helpers in UE5 or Unity or whatever.
I think they are essentially different types of automation as it were. I don’t share @BrianRubin’s feelings that:
Or at least, not precisely. I think it depends a lot on the specifics. YMMV.
Voice synthesizers are not an equivalent comparison. Newer generative AI is using voice clips taken from people (hopefully with permission) to replace the performance of a human. Synthesized voices were built for different accessibility related reasons.
People can make their own judgements on what they buy, but for me, utilizing AI voices to replace human performances means I am out.
The dev has been very clear that they chose to do this so as not to have to pay for a recorded performance.
This is bullshit and you know it. No AI speech system is regurgitating “voice clips taken from people”, they’re using voice clips taken from people and using them to train models that output params on text to speech systems – i.e. synthesizers. And Berzerk! didn’t use a synth for accessibility reasons.
In the implementation here, the voicing is described as poor by Misguided, supra. That’s fine. I disagree slighlty, I think the voices are distinct to each character and convey emot better than most low-budget VO work. That an opinion about the game. Which was made by a 2-person team and was never going to have professional VO work, and was unlikely to be fully VOd even with volunteer voice actors.
Frankly, @JonRowe you’ve made your general point. You don’t like conceptually anything labelled AI. A couple others have chimed in that they agree with you. Fine, but the ethics discussion should be taking place in the extensive P&R thread on AI, which you have been participating in.
Edit/add: the tech doesn’t involve clips because even if it’san identifiable voice, it’s novel speech, never said before by anyone the clip is allegedly stolen from.
You are allowed to have this opinion, which is fine.
But I just wanted to highlight it, because I fundamentally disagree with this. As the models are now, they will never be able to compete with human (even cheap) actors because there is 0 emotion in the delivery. They sound wooden and contrived. No VO would have been better than this. As I said, it immediately stood out to me in the trailers.
So, to me, it sounds bad, and I don’t want to support developers that choose not to get good human performances. They made their choice, and I am making my choice.
As for the ethics, these models are trained on voice clips. Some of the models use actors paid for their work, some do not under the guise of “fair use” that discussion is for another thread.
If the model output was good would you change your mind? I get standing against the use of AI, but I do not feel quality is necessarily part of the equation. The VO they could have afforded was not going to be good anyway.
I drew my line at SpeedTree, which means I haven’t played anything new in ~25 years. That program took a lot of work hours, and thus pay, away from human animators.
Good for you
For a game that claims to take inspiration from Hayao Miyazaki
“I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself”
Hayao Mizayaki - On AI generated animation.
Near the end of the clip, after hearing that the animators’ goal is to create a machine that “draws pictures like humans do,” Miyazaki’s comments are even more grim. “I feel like we are nearing to the end of the times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves…”
@JonRowe , I think you, specifically argue in bad faith and are being disingenuous. It’s fine to have a bright line, express that you have a bright line, argue in the other thread about it, but here you’re (I think deliberately) implying that Miyazaki is commenting on the VO of this game specifically (in 2016 somehow), when he probably has never even seen it. You also consistently across threads make authoritative statements which are wrong in detail if not in broad concept, about AI techs without opinion qualifiers.
It’s frustrating to read, in the same manner that the Diablo 4 thread was frustrating, where a long-time, respected poster kept making authoritative statements about a game he wasn’t playing. Which essentially made discussion of the game impossible.
The game … I’ve played a little more than 2 hrs, all on steam deck while I was at a conference. My impressions right now:
- It has the 1930s ish aesthetic of Crimson Skies, but I don’t think it’s a Crimson Skies successor. I only got into one dogfight, failed to shoot down the pirates (but escaped).
- As an arcade dogfighter/flying game it’s pretty good. On water, directional control is by rudder (deck triggers), water has high resistance. In air, it’s mostly good, but needs a reset camera button (or I need to set up a bind). I crashed more than once trying to look forward.
- A couple years ago a brewing game would be unique, but now there are several on the market. This has less detail than 100 days, whether that matters or not I don’t know. Brewing happens close to instantly, rather than needing to lay down casks or leaving wort in a reactor.
- There’s also a salvage game game, which I played once but a shark destroyed the crate I was trying to retrieve.
The developers may have thrown too much into the mix here, where any one of the themes could have supported a game by itself.
- Definitely seems possible to end up in the soft-lock mentioned by @Thorne 25 posts ago. I accidently bought a brewery upgrade which took up most of my cash, so after I refuel my plane next I won’t also be able to buy repairs.
- There’s some issues with the menus on the deck, where you can’t tell what menu option is presently highlighted. I don’t know if that’s an issue if playing M&K, because then you’d have a cursor.
- There’s a timer/calendar. I don’t know if there’s a countdown in the background where the pirates are taking islands or something, or if that can just be ignored.
Well, I was interested, the trailer had VO I thought was bad, so I looked into it, and it was AI generated, which I find personally insulting, so I am not buying it unless they change.
Sorry, thems the breaks for this consumer.
Had they not used Gen AI I would be playing it this weekend.
Oh, and the game really needs a VSI. Landing is ok, but I prop struck more wheat fields than I can remember trying to fly low enough to harvest. :)
Y’all know, I thought my personal reasons for not buying stuff were kinda eclectic, but I got nothing on some of you chaps. Nothing at all.
Anyways, the game does need the co-pilot call-outs voiced, because I sure as hell was busy keeping the plane a) in the air and b) in one piece while employing the most radical approaches to harvesting agricultural goods known to man. A text entry at the bottom informing me of a wreck or whatever else probably would not have worked.
The basic ideas are working, but I think it would benefit from manual saving (or at least multiple slots), so that a flip-over or crash doesn’t completely total your starting budget. You do need some upgrades to travel to the outer isles, as you’ll get attacked and the starter plane handles like a pregnant cow on ice.
Controversy about glorified text-to-speech software notwithstanding, I actually like it - it’s silly, doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it looks great. It’s got a few bumps, though.
“I just found out the opponents in this game, as well as DCS, Crimson Skies, Civ VI, and Old World are AI generated. This is taking opportunities away from human opponents.” — JSWIFT1667
I’m all for tempering how AI is used. Definitely think AI art, writing, and music are problematic. But AI voice synthesis in an indie game isn’t offensive to me any more than C64 games with synthesized voices were.
If we stopped referring to LLMs and the like as AI (which they certainly aren’t), it would make these discussions much easier
For clarification, I don’t have the game (though it looks like fun!), that remark was based on the trailer. To me, the voices sounded wooden, but maybe the full game is better.
I think Thorne is right that the gameplay-important call outs are the ones that happen while flying, stuff being spotted, etc. Flying low, which is necessary to harvest most ingredients, does take concentration and its easy to miss the item/salvage marker popping up on the screen.
Indeed, it’s all in the details, which @Shards gets at as well. “AI” whether used accurately or not is a very broad and all-inclusive sort of label, and doesn’t help a great deal. Like the (I assume sarcastic) post about SpeedTree from @billt721, modern software of all types is built using automated assistance that could easily fall into the over-broad definitions we often use for AI.
I tend to be uneasy at least about automation software that builds solutions based on unattributed use of the work of other people, but even that is a gray area given the realities of the Internet and how we as a culture view content/data/information today. Everyone has to figure out what their own line is I suppose, but the task will only get harder as we go deeper down the rabbit hole.
Have you gotten to the point of doing any actual dogfighting? I am still doing ingredient runs, and got shooed off a nearby island by pirates I couldn’t touch with my water guns.