• OfficialThunderbolt@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    “This is notably the first real instance of game developers using AI voices instead of human performers, and to a near-full extent.”

    No, that is not true. There were a number of older games from the 1980s that had AI voices, such as Impossible Mission on the C64, but that was done out of disk space requirements.

    • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      There is a difference between synthesized voices and AI-generated ones. Those old ones were synthesized.

        • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Hmm, they aren’t clear whether it’s fully voice-acted or whether he provided phonetic sounds for them to synthesize according to the text, but in either case, it’s not AI whatsoever.

          Important to note that ESS Technologies (the company cited there) was literally a company who made synthesized speech for video games.

          Electronic Speech Systems produced synthetic speech for, among other things, home computer systems like the Commodore 64. Within the hardware limitations of that time, ESS used Mozer’s technology, in software, to produce realistic-sounding voices that often became the boilerplate for the respective games.