Anger from voice actors as NSFW mods use AI deepfakes to replicate their voices: 'This is NOT okay.'

Source via PCGamer
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A slew of pornographic mods on the Nexus Mods website has caused mounting anger in the voice acting community. As reported by Gamesradar, Twitter user Robbie92_ has posted a list of Skyrim voice actors who have had their voices used against their will for NSFW mods, earlier this week.

These actors include April Stewart, who in addition to multiple characters in Skyrim, is the voice of Petra Venj in Destiny 2 and Jessamine Kaldwin in Dishonoured 2; Jon Curry, who voiced Zevran in Dragon Age: Origins; and Susan Eisenberg, who has voiced Wonder Woman in both animation and video games since 2001.

The National Association of Voice Actors tweeted in response: "The damage to voice actors and game companies by AI and synthetic voices is real and tangible," proceeding to tag both Bethesda Studios and Zenimax Online, writing: "voice actors don't have the legal ability to fight this, but you can help."

The wider voice acting community has also rallied to decry the mods. Linsay Rousseau of Transformers: War for Cybertron, Deathloop, and Fallout 76 quote tweeted: "Voice Actors don't consent to this. If you're using these mods, you're stealing & abusing our work."

Jennifer Hale, voice of Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect Series, also tweeted: "to make this CRYSTAL clear: if you do not have written permission to use my voice, you DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION to use my voice, including AI use."

Meanwhile Abbey Veffer, who voices a host of characters in The Elder Scrolls Online and Genshin Impact, wrote: "I do not, and never will, consent to my voice being used for AI synthesis, cloning, deepfakes, etc. This is NOT okay."

Robbie92_ has also been doing considerable work via a google document to assemble a list of mods "that use AI cloning to produce non-consensual pornographic content" for the purposes of spreading awareness and reporting them, an exhaustive task that April Stewart thanked them for. "The Google doc was particularly helpful when I contacted my agent and also requested the content be taken down."

I reached out to Robbie92_ to ask about their work, and I'll update this article if I hear back from them.

Voice actors clearly shouldn't have to spend hours of their day browsing Nexus Mods just to protect themselves, and I can't even imagine the amount of time, money, and labour that would need to be poured into fighting this kind of AI use en-masse, and Nexus Mods' current attitude towards AI-generated work on their platform doesn't make matters easier.

They've stated these mods "may be removed if we receive a credible complaint from an affected creator/rights holder", but considering there's an entire live document dedicated to tracking these things, I can't see that being a satisfying solution for anybody involved.

 

[Hillary Clinton's Ass]

Ok, and how are they going to enforce these bans or whatever? Are these VAs going to copyright their voices? How would you copyright a voice? A range? Don't these people adjust their voices all the time?

For example, the only VA that I know of is Steve Blum, so I quickly google him you can get a list of all his roles over the years from either Wikipedia or this website that tracks VAs and their roles. Also, someone on YouTube has made video has over 2 hours of performance's by Steve Blum, skip around the video and notice how his voice changes from role to role. It could be from changes made in post-production or he could it himself.

How are they going to enforce taking down content, degenerate or not, made with AI voices? When you can easily recreate Blum's voice, slightly pitch it and now you have a new different voice and have it say whatever horrifying thing you want it to say.

 

[Shamefur Dispray]

I don't see the Chad who voiced Dagoth Ur complaining

 

[Omen_Sulk]

Ok, and how are they going to enforce these bans or whatever? Are these VAs going to copyright their voices? How would you copyright a voice? A range? Don't these people adjust their voices all the time?

It's the same as the Spiderman flag mod. They don't need the law, they have mob rule. They are in control of all the major mod sites.

 

[Neo-Nazi Rich Evans]

"Help! Help! I'm being abused by coomers on the internet!"

honestly that list jsut sounds like a coomer advertisement. hey coommers here is a list of all the coomer mods you might not have heard about.

because they could fuck everyone on the ship

nah, unfortunately there are a few characters on the ship you cant fuck. joker, edi, samara, kasumi,and i dont think javik is fuckable either.

"They are having them taken down as they find them"

How? Their very claim is these sound clips are not their real voice. This is not something they ever performed or recorded.

Now they may have some case that the sound clips were generated using samples of their other performances. But that gets into uncharted areas of law. And certainly is not covered in the DMCA.

it will be interesting to see if ai voice stuff ever gets a lawsuit. do you own the copyright to voice trained on your voice work? and in that case what about non voice stuff? do i own the text which forma chatbot if it was trained on my written word?

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

this anger only makes my penis harder.

 

[Alter Ego]

With such audio deepfakes, I really can't see any fault exceeding common, permissible modding if they're trained from audio content that only comes from the base game. If the training pool extends further than that, then that ought to be regarded the same as a mod that just pulls whole audio content from other media.

 

[God of Nothing]

I don't see the Chad who voiced Dagoth Ur complaining

Because he hasn't heard this yet

 

[POWER IN MISERY]

i wonder what will be worse in two years, AI generated horseshit or the overreaching backlash that will be used to monopolize the creation and use of AI generated horseshit?

 

[Tanner Glass]

it will be interesting to see if ai voice stuff ever gets a lawsuit. do you own the copyright to voice trained on your voice work? and in that case what about non voice stuff? do i own the text which forma chatbot if it was trained on my written word?

Legally it will likely never go anywhere just because AI didn't "create" the problem.

It's currently not a crime to do an impression of someone, for example. SNL does impressions of famous people (complete with costumed actors) and has them say and do things the actual person would not do.

It's not a crime to do an impersonation of Lydia from Skyrim as a VA who isn't the first one and record any lines you want, so having an AI do it doesn't change the base law underneath.

 

[Black Man Underwear]

"Voice Actors don't consent to this. If you're using these mods, you're stealing & abusing our work."

I steal and abuse your work in addition to this.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

using ai voices to make your coomer mods because you are horny < using ai voices to make super cool ass new stories to games that need more content

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Skyrim VAs just mad that AI gives a more convincing performance.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

i dont think javik is fuckable either.

You would be incorrect on two of those thanks to the final fanservice DLC

But you are correct in that you don't fuck them *on the ship*

 

[Kari Kamiya]

>Richard Epcar on the list
lol brb. gonna make an AI Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo x Joseph Joestar yaoi to spite him.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever heard him making (in-scene) sexual-sounding grunts at all, and he's been in a lot of various dubs. I'm... kinda curious now.

Also add in Etemon just for the lulz. The monkey needs to be spanked if you catch my drift.

 

[Tetragrammaton]

on one hand i get it in the sense of not wanting weirdos using your voice for whatever degenerate porn they wanna use it for. but on the other hand would they rather voice it themselves? this is just taking advantage of a market they refuse to take advantage of themselves.

they gave away their voice rights when they became voice actors so if they wanna get mad about this they should also be upset about years and years of youtube poops and out of context clips which people paste together to make people say things they would not say otherwise.

 

[Michael Wade]

Did they make their own free voice ai? Or just use 11 labs for all this shit?

 

[Oilspill Battery]

What website do people use nowadays to clone voices? Ai.15 has been doing for the better part of a year by this point

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

This sort of shit goes back forever.
Back when Howard Stern was actually funny, he'd run stuff like this... (I think this is from 1992 or so)

The only issue I can see is if they're profiting from the voice somehow, though perhaps I'm wrong? I know authors like George RR Martin and Anne Rice can and do shut down fanfiction,even if no one is profiting from it. So maybe something similar applies here.

 

[Dog-O-Tron 5000v5.0]

Oh no guys, they said it is "NOT okay" better stop now.

 

[Quijibo69]

The different between VO and AI is that AI doesn't diddle kids.