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The Witcher Voice Actor Doug Cockle Calls AI 'Inevitable' but 'Dangerous'
22.12.2023 - 11:29 / ign.com / Doug Cockle / Ai
The Witcher voice actor Doug Cockle has expressed caution and frustration at the growing presence of artificial intelligence within the video game industry, calling it "inevitable" but "dangerous".
Cockle, who voices Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher game series and upcoming Netflix film Sirens of the Deep, told IGN that his main concern isn't with AI itself, but people using it for nefarious purposes.
"AI is inevitable and developers will use AI. We are not 100% sure exactly what that means," Cockle said. "They're already doing it in various ways, filling in background, NPC voices, and things like that, which is unfortunate because those voices were all human beings at one point, and the voices are all modelled on human beings. So they have taken someone's voice, put it into their database, digitized it and are using it to say things that the individual never said. There's something unethical about that and so there's a lot of debate going on."
Cockle was contacted by an AI company a few years ago who wanted to upload his Geralt voice to its database. "And I said no, and I still say no. But that's not because I don't like AI," he said.
"It's because I think with voice actors, particularly with voice actors who do main character roles, it is a reality that people are ripping our voices off. That's happening. It's happened to me on multiple occasions. I can't even police it because I would spend all my time policing this stupid stuff."
Even if people are using the voice with good intentions, like genuine fans making Witcher mods, it directly impacts voice actors, Cockle said. "Every time somebody does that, they're effectively robbing me of income, and not just me, any other voice actor who they do it with," he said. "We're all watching our voices get used in ways that we would rather they weren't."
It's when those using AI do have illicit purposes that it gets really scary though. "This is the bit that we really don't like about AI, is that if they can do it for things that are just commercially questionable, then they can do it with things that are politically or ethically bad," Cockle said.
"Somebody could use AI to produce something racist using Geralt's voice, using my voice, or just something against anything that most normal people think is good. That's where the AI gets dangerous. Fake news, false news, false opinions. We're seeing it with politicians now. People are putting things out there. So AI is not the problem. It's the people using AI."
Cockle continued: "It's changed a lot as well, because when The Witcher 3 came out, I don't think that people playing games, not that they weren't interested, but they didn't really think about who was voicing these characters. It wasn't something that was of
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