AI integration in the gaming industry has reached a new level — Electronic Arts makes Apex Legends voice actors work on their future firings.
«Voices» Apex Legends complain that Electronic Arts is forcing them to sign an agreement that will effectively put them out of work. The company sent a confidential letter to the employees demanding that they allow their voices to be used to train artificial intelligence. All 32 actors refused.
«I feel forced to “let go” of the role to which I have lent my voice for almost 6 years.But here, we are not simply being asked to work, we are being asked to give up our know-how to train the generative Al that will replace us tomorrow. We are being asked to accept what we are fighting against. We are being asked to shoot Ourselves in the foot. We are being asked to endorse Al», — writes in Instagram French voice actress Pascale Chemin, who provided the voice of Wraith.
She added that if no one protests, AI will displace all voice actors in the future. There are no official comments from EA yet.
EA’s plans to replace voice actors do not look new. In 2024, the publisher stated that it planned to replace them with AI in the voice of NPCs in future games. But then they were talking about new games, not existing ones, which was probably a matter of time.
At the same time, forcing actors to sign an agreement on their own replacement raises questions and looks like a cynical way to save money. The situation has already caused outrage in the gaming industry. Now, the voice actors of Apex Legends have stated that they want to keep their roles, but if EA continues to apply pressure, the situation may change.
Today, the best AI models are not able to convey emotions and intonations as well as live actors. This raises the question of the deterioration in the quality of voice realism.
As for the restructuring of Electronic Arts, we can recall how in 2023 it closed the games Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile. Also, an unannounced game based on the Apex Legends franchises will not see the light of day and Titanfall. A year later, the company announced plans to lay off nearly 700 employees, so The same fate befell Respawn’s Mandalorian game.
So far, voice actors have withstood the first blow — gamers are also sounding the alarm. Microsoft introduced the Muse generative AI model that can replace game developers. Many is not very excited about Muse, but is afraid to speak out against. In addition, games on PlayStation will be created by AIFor the same reason, Netflix closed the AAA studio.
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