Doug Cockle, the English voice actor of Geralt in “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt”, recently talked about generative AI again, and this time he was obviously quite angry. He said that if he had enough power, funds and influence, he would want to take all AI platforms that use his voice to court, and even “sue them until they go bankrupt.”
The problem is not making money, the problem is that the sound is used indiscriminately!
Cockle pointed out that some AI chat platforms currently allow users to interact with the “Geralt” character, and some platforms directly use his voice to generate speech. What makes him even more unacceptable is that AI can make this voice say racial discrimination, misogyny and even extreme political remarks, but these contents were clearly never said by him. For an actor who relies on his voice to shape his character, this is more than just “AI helping to imitate the voice”.
“There are real people behind the voice.”
Cockle said that if he did file a lawsuit, it would not be mainly for the money, but because this approach made him feel that his identity and work had been violated. He also reminded people who use AI that there are actually real actors behind these voices and should not be regarded as “digital materials” that can be used casually to generate content. It seems that AI can generate whatever it wants. When encountering a voice that I disagree with, I finally have to face a very real question: Whose voice does it originally belong to?