Chinese Video Game Replaces Voice Actor With Synthetic Voice

Chinese video game publisher HoYoverse has replaced a voice performer in its popular Tears of Themis game with a synthetic model of his voice. The character of Vyn will still speak in actor Jiang Guangtao’s voice, except it will be an AI mimicking him.

Virtual Video Game Voice

Jiang Guangtao’s voice can be heard in many Chinese video games and animated productions and is a co-founder of the voice performer agency Photosynthetic Building Blocks. He abruptly stopped working this summer as a result of somewhat murky legal and possibly financial trouble with the police, though the official comment from his company only refers to him cooperating “with the investigation due to commercial and economic disputes.” Some productions he was on were canceled, but HoYoverse decided to replicate his voice for Tears of Themis after obtaining his permission to do so. According to the game developer, they generated the voice model of Guangtao using an in-house synthetic speech generator called Anti-Entropy AI. The synthetic voice was used specifically for an in-game event, and HoYoverse stated that the AI’s version of the actor’s voice wouldn’t be further employed, but its success suggests the option won’t vanish entirely. The game company debuted Anti-Entropy AI in an entirely different project earlier this year. The synthetic speech generator voices the company’s virtual human character Lumi built with Unreal Engine. After a debut on the Chinese social media platform BiliBili, Lumi now boasts nearly two million subscribers.

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