There're a lot of phoneme algos and other tools (which are AI but not of the LLM/GenAI sort) which you can use to clone your own voice to some degree; getting a professional degree of quality out of it is quite hard and takes practice, and different tools have different pitch/rhythm/etc. options.

Fingers crossed. Appreciate the giveaway. <3

I somehow missed this response and LMAO oh my -gosh-

Gunblade SPH has made my day. <3

Oh, shit.

I mean, 'The Edict' is just fucking capitalism eating itself in its sunset days, and I've already told you I agree with you about the shortcuts they -are- taking, however carefully.

I will, however, never concede that resemblance is sufficient to decide on guilt. That's fuckin' bananas.

Fucking -yeesh-. What a shame.

The fuck is anyone burying good practicals under genAI slop for?

If I'm wrong about this, I won't mind admitting it, but I don't think I am.

Also, I gotta stop having this fucking argument 'cuz it's three o'clock in the morning.

I -did- think about it.

That's the point. I did a ton of research, I looked into the tools and methodologies people use for this kind of thing, I applied my own experience in development (both for a little-guy company and a giant corporation) to examine what little real information there is.

I don't think it's cool, I think it's indicative on a development ethos that runs counter to corpo 'best' practices.

I also don't think you can win every scrap you get in, and I've worked in a company Embark's size before.

-I do think so-, and I've said it time and fucking time again.

It's shitty corpo behavior and it sucks. I wish they'd do the right thing. Their game is phenomenal - one of the best and most holistically-designed games I've ever played - and I wish my opinion of it could be wholly unvarnished.

But the difference between the TTS thing in terms of sheer harm and consent-breaching and environmental impact and ethics and using generative AI to achieve the same thing by paying no one is night and fucking day.

I'm old. I'm fucking -tired-. SOMETIMES I have to pick my battles.

And motherfucker -I DO- have an issue with their use of TTS! That shit sucks, and I hope they use some of their fabulous wealth to instead hire those VAs to come back in and record every goddamn word that happens in their game, and then call 'em back when they make a new map. I want that!

Why would people hire foley artists if they were just going to prompt for stuff? Why would they send artists out into the wilderness to take pictures, or hire on voice actors? If they were going to just ask Midjourney for concepts, why spend all the money and pay all the industry veterans?

The disclosure says nothing of the kind.

Devs say the -opposite- of that, and then describe the reasoning behind the disclosure.

These disclosures (and generative AI, which caused the need for them) are quite recent, but ML, procgen, and AI as a concept are old tech used all over, before GenAI.

No, it's because -those- games were created in a time before generative-AI-built shovelware became incredibly cheap and a little profitable to make, the same way that Amazon's ebooks section is absolutely fucking slammed with unreadable ChatGPT garbage.

It's not! My ethical and environmental issues with generative AI as a concept extend to both its use in video games or journalism and its use in making cheap-shit furry art that sucks, and the witch-hunting involved with suspected use of generative AI does not differ from one context to anoither.

A fucking HUGE amount of technology uses the term 'AI' to indicate that it is in some way making a decision out of human hands.

Generative AI causes outsized damage and it should be fucking outlawed, but it is INTENTIONALLY being hidden among other technologies so that folks don't get wise.

I don't know how many more times I need to say this:

The term 'AI' does not inherently mean that something is generative AI. Starcraft had AI. Megatextures like BRINK's use AI. Machine learning is AI. Heuristic phoneme algorithms are AI. Fucking IVR systems in corporate call centers use AI!

They're disclosing because if you don't admit to using 'AI' when you use machine learning, someone's going to try and sue you about it.

That DOES NOT mean that the pervasive genAI garbage that's all over the place is actually present, just that legal decided 'let's cover our asses just in case'.