AI voice synthesising is being hailed as the future of video games – but at what cost?

When the epic open-world PlayStation 4 game Red Dead Redemption 2 was developed in 2013, it took 2,200 days to record the 1,200 voices in the game with 700 voice actors, who recited the 500,000 lines of dialogue. It was a massive feat that is nearly impossible for any other studio to replicate – let alone a games studio smaller than Rockstar Games. But with advances in artificial intelligence it is becoming easier and easier to recreate human voices to create automated real-time responses, near limitless dialogue options and speech tailored to a user's unique input. But the technology raises questions about the ethics of synthesising voices. The Australian software developer Replica Studios rolled out a voice synthesiser platform for games developers in 2019 – a tool used by Australian games developer PlaySide Studios in their game Age of Darkness: Final Stand.