In a recent interview with Edge magazine (spotted via GamesRadar), actor Samantha Béart—most famous for their performance as Karlach in Baldur's Gate 3—gave their assessment of the push for AI-generated performances and other assets in games, and the motivation behind it.
"Essentially, [CEOs pushing AI] just want to save money," said Béart. "In the long term, it'll destroy their reputation, their company, everything." Unsurprisingly, their opinion of AI in games hasn't improved since they criticized the tech alongside fellow BG3 performers at the 2024 BAFTAs.
Béart was also doubtful that performers and artists in the industry would accept having these tools foisted on them. "It's just not going to happen," argued Béart. "Why would you do it? You've just signed your way out of any sort of job or career.
"We have an industry of highly artistic people who've had a calling to do this stuff, and then you've got these people with money, who don't play games, who see it as an easy way to make a return on investment."
"Those two things are oil and water," they said. "It's very difficult to negotiate with people on opposite sides of the spectrum."
Béart also contrasted the way gaming performance capture is handled with more traditional acting roles: "You don't show up on set and realize as you're filming that it's Marvel. You sign an NDA and then they tell you. Whereas in video games, culturally it seems to be they give you an NDA, and then they still don't tell you what's going on, which just doesn't help the performance."
"The dream of the tech industry is to sell off your company at an overinflated price and retire," the actor said in summation. "And I feel that's being done with game studios right now."
Béart's assessment is being born out in real time: Even as more money is poured into AI development and datacenters, generative AI in games remains incredibly unpopular, a dirty word you have to justify to gamers in any potential sales pitch. When you don't disclose ahead of time, things get particularly messy.
One recent example includes the disastrous AI-generated trailer for Ark DLC Aquatica, which is being made by a new studio. Ark's original developers felt the need to distance themselves from the situation after a massive (and totally predictable) backlash.
There's also the whole AI Aloy fiasco, where a leaked Sony demo of the Horizon series protagonist as an AI chatbot responding to voice commands led to a wave of criticism and derision, as well as a response from Aloy's actual voice actor, Ashly Burch.
Alongside the ethical concerns behind sourcing and the potential automated replacement of creative jobs, the quality of AI-generated text, imagery, video, and voice overs has noticeably plateaued in the past year, with AI models never able to divest themselves of the disturbing, uncanny, telltale signs of AI generation.
That's to say nothing of their predilection for confidently presenting false information as fact, or "hallucinating" to borrow the industry term. A recent study estimated that AI search engines present false or misleading information 60% of the time.
SAG-AFTRA is still embroiled in a major strike against publishers for a new interactive media contract covering performances in videogames. The sticking point in negotiation is protections and clearly defined rights for actors over their performances being used to train AI models.
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