[Mod idea] AI remake of all TR2-3 Lara voices into TR1 voice and vice versa!

[v00d00m4n]

I love TR1 voice more than TR2 and TR3 and hate that voices inconsisten between games, so i have idea to use AI (one of many) to train it on TR1 lara voice, than take all in game and FMV samples of lara voice from TR2 and TR3 and process them with AI to turn them into TR1 voice and make a mod that makes all 3 games voiced with TR1 voice.

However i know that there are people who may prefer TR2-3 voice, so same needs to be done in opposite direction with TR1. TR2-3 voices should be used to train AI, and TR1 voices from gameplay and FMV should be processed with AI and turned in TR2-3 voices.

So 2 versions of mod needed.

This would make whole trilogy voice-consistent.

I really wish this to be done officially by devs, but i dont have much hope for that so i wanted to create such mod but dont have time right now to mess with game sounds and do all of this, so i share idea of mod i wanted to create, so that someone else could do it.

[Teratus]

To be honest I don't even notice the difference.

If I didn't know there was a VA change between games I wouldn't have picked up on it XD

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by Teratus:

To be honest I don't even notice the difference.

If I didn't know there was a VA change between games I wouldn't have picked up on it XD

TR1 voice sounds more young and more playful, TR2-3 sounds more adult and dry:

https://youtu.be/kmqSZknybHs

[der.dida83]

In TR2 she says "aha" each time when picking up an item. Can see how it can be considered annoying ;)

[shonasof]

They'd probably still have to pay the original voice actors if they did this officially, so at that point why not just hire them to come in and record the lines directly?

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by shonasof:

They'd probably still have to pay the original voice actors if they did this officially, so at that point why not just hire them to come in and record the lines directly?

Not really. You dont have to pay original actor if use another actor who perfectly imitates his voice by learning it with hearing and analyzis. AI does the same, it does not use original actor voice, it learns it and imitates it just like imitating actor.

You only have to pay original actor by hours he or she spend on recording lines. Since there is 0 hours spent when AI does the job instead of actor, it also means that actor deserves 0 money.

Whole idea of actors that companies owe them money for AI voice over when actros really did 0 job for 0 hours, is absolutely insane and unjust.

Also in some cases for better job of AI voice imitation uses some other actor real voice that just gets morphed into imitated voice, this makes more realistic imitation, but still its job of other actor and you dont have to pay anything to actor who did not do this job.

[GamerXT]

The remasters probably should of used someone new to voice everything, like you say, similar to other remasters.

Although maybe a modder could fund someone else for that ? I'm sure some would if asked. Yet maybe an issue adding voices to FMVs ? Since I don't think there's versions without them.

[dml!]

Originally posted by v00d00m4n:

Not really. You dont have to pay original actor if use another actor who perfectly imitates his voice by learning it with hearing and analyzis. AI does the same, it does not use original actor voice, it learns it and imitates it just like imitating actor.

You only have to pay original actor by hours he or she spend on recording lines. Since there is 0 hours spent when AI does the job instead of actor, it also means that actor deserves 0 money.

Whole idea of actors that companies owe them money for AI voice over when actros really did 0 job for 0 hours, is absolutely insane and unjust.

Also in some cases for better job of AI voice imitation uses some other actor real voice that just gets morphed into imitated voice, this makes more realistic imitation, but still its job of other actor and you dont have to pay anything to actor who did not do this job.

And this is the extremely slippery slope of AI. Since for the next step you could suggest that it would be fair to take existing audio of an actor's voice from other media and use AI to place it in a new, completely unrelated product. That's entering dangerous territory since voice actors and artists and anything that AI can be used to replicate will no longer have jobs.

And I personally don't think it's "insane and unjust" at all - you're trying to take unique nuances of a certain actor's voice because you like their voice, so by using AI to replicate their voice you're admitting you want to use their voice but don't want to pay them. Now that's what I call "unjust".

[GamerXT]

I doubt the TC shall complete this project, so the moral factor probably doesn't matter.

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by dml!:

Originally posted by v00d00m4n:

Not really. You dont have to pay original actor if use another actor who perfectly imitates his voice by learning it with hearing and analyzis. AI does the same, it does not use original actor voice, it learns it and imitates it just like imitating actor.

You only have to pay original actor by hours he or she spend on recording lines. Since there is 0 hours spent when AI does the job instead of actor, it also means that actor deserves 0 money.

Whole idea of actors that companies owe them money for AI voice over when actros really did 0 job for 0 hours, is absolutely insane and unjust.

Also in some cases for better job of AI voice imitation uses some other actor real voice that just gets morphed into imitated voice, this makes more realistic imitation, but still its job of other actor and you dont have to pay anything to actor who did not do this job.

And this is the extremely slippery slope of AI. Since for the next step you could suggest that it would be fair to take existing audio of an actor's voice from other media and use AI to place it in a new, completely unrelated product. That's entering dangerous territory since voice actors and artists and anything that AI can be used to replicate will no longer have jobs.

And I personally don't think it's "insane and unjust" at all - you're trying to take unique nuances of a certain actor's voice because you like their voice, so by using AI to replicate their voice you're admitting you want to use their voice but don't want to pay them. Now that's what I call "unjust".

Why should i care about selfish actors and their jobs? A lot of times they ruined games and movies because they wanted more money, was busy with other projects and was not available, was pushing their rules and agendas and so on, and this ended up with change of voice actors for character, or change of character for voice actor demands and so on.

Jeez we even had 3 Lara Croft voices across 1st 6 games! This is madness and it negatively affects OUR - END USER EXPIRIENCE!

All i want as end user is CONSISTENCY - i want all games to have same voice. I dont care if actor unvailable, has some agenda that devs dont agree with, became greedy or else. All i care is that character should sounds the same even if actor got replaced and imitator voice would be tuned with AI to sound exactly as before.

Good actors who are also good persons would not lost their job, because they are still better than anything AI can do, and better than any imitator actor tuned or not with AI.

So true talents who are acting good at their jobs will keep their jobs, bad actors and bad persons will be cleansed from industry and it will become healthier. Also unlucky ones if they are good also will have no job, but thats always happened everywhere when progress allowed to replace humans, so they have to try some other job and learn something new where they would not be replace.

It happened more than century ago when workers started to get replaced by machines, workers protested use of machines, also claiming that machines will replace humans entirely. Well, they replaced some amount but not everyone, people still needed, but problem is that selfishness of people who did not want to loose their jobs - attempted to stop technical and industrial progress and their predictions was wrong or was a lie in attemtp to protect themselves without care for other people.

Same happens now with actors. They would not be all replaced, actors still needed to make a good acting, but bilogically defined characterestics of voice are not exclusive enymore and can be imitated on top of other actor. Pure AI generated speech sounds bland and sometimes uncanny, so a lot of actors will keep their jobs, and maybe they will be less selfish and will put more effort into their roles to compete with AI and show that they are still better and irreplacable. So its all for good.

There is no legal or moral difference between some living person imitating voice and ai imitating voice. This does not infrige anyone's rights. Neural network Ai get trained same ways human's brains do - it analyzises data, notice patterns, memorize patterns, when tries to imitate them. Ai dont store actual voice samples of any actor, does not compose new voices from samples of their voices, all it does is generates new voices by using learned patterns, exactly same way as anoyne who imitates someone's voice - does.

Voice imitation was used for decades, for example a lot of Game tie ins to movies, did not have origina high budget actors voicing characters, and some cheaper actors was imitating their voices. And it was legal and did not cause high budged actors to loose their jobs. Funny enought some big actors who dont want to do small time jobs like that even making recomendations of cheaper and less busy actors who can imitate them perfectly and kinda have some regular voice doubles, and they dont share profits with each other. One does not blame other for "stealing his voice".

Also voices are not unique, a lot of people has similar to fully identical voices, its just a biological characteristic, like color of hairs. Voice is not something that can be copyrighted, as well as manner of speech which is also usually not exclusive and common for group of people in same shared enviroment. Family relatives of same gender also usually have nearly of fully identical voices - fathers and sons, brothers, mothers and daugters, sisters etc.

If this biological feature is the only value you have, then you are doing something wrong with your life. Good voice actors can actualy talk in different voices and its not the voice that is valuable, but the way actors play with it, and this cant be replaced by AI, so good actors will be valuable even in AI era.

[dml!]

Sure you can find people that have very similar voices, but actually finding ones that also have the ability and training to closely replicate the nuances in speech of the original voice actor is another thing entirely. The process is far more difficult than you seem to think, in terms of both how unique a voice actor's voice is, and how they deliver that voice. And my gripe with AI is that if it becomes capable enough to do that, then voice actors could quickly be losing their jobs if people think the same way you do.

Suggesting that's fine because you think that if their "biological feature is the only value they have then they're doing something wrong in their life" is ignorant of the amount of practise required to deliver their voice in an interesting way. With that you're also suggesting that a lot of singers, athletes, and various other jobs are "doing something wrong" and they should instead place their efforts in whatever you consider to be a worthwhile job that can't be taken over by AI. If that's the case you shouldn't even be on here consuming video games.