GTA 5 Actor Goes Nuclear On AI Company That Made Voice Chatbot of Him 56
Rich Stanton reports via PC Gamer: Ned Luke, the actor whose roles include GTA 5's Michael De Santa, has gone off on an AI company that released an unlicensed voice chatbot based on the character, and succeeded in having the offending bot nuked from the internet. AI company WAME had tweeted a link to its Michael chatbot on January 14 along with the text: "Any GTA fans around here? Now take your gaming experience to another level. Try having a realistic voice conversation with Michael De Santa, the protagonist of GTA 5, right now!"
Unfortunately for WAME, it quickly attracted the attention of Luke, who does not seem like the type of man to hold back. "This is fucking bullshit WAME," says Luke (though I am definitely hearing all this in Michael's voice). "Absolutely nothing cool about ripping people off with some lame computer estimation of my voice. Don't waste your time on this garbage." Luke also tagged Rockstar Games and the SAG-AFTRA union, since when the chatbot and tweets promoting it have been deleted. Fellow actors including Roger Clark weighed in with sympathy about how much this kind of stuff sucks, and our boy wasn't done by a long shot:
"I'm not worried about being replaced, Roger," says Luke. "I just hate these fuckers, and am pissed as fuck that our shitty union is so damn weak that this will soon be an issue on legit work, not just some lame douchebag tryna make $$ off of our voices." Luke is here referring to a recent SAG-AFTRA "ethical AI" agreement which has gone down with some of its members like a cup of cold sick. Musician Marilou A. Burnel (not affiliated with WAME) pops up to suggest that "creative people make remarkable things with AI, and the opposite is also true." "Not using my voice they don't," says Luke. WAME issued a statement expressing their "profound understanding and concern."
"This incident has highlighted the intricate interplay between the advancement of AI technology and the ethical and legal realms," says WAME. "WAME commits to protecting the rights of voice actors and creators while advancing ethical AI practices."
Unfortunately for WAME, it quickly attracted the attention of Luke, who does not seem like the type of man to hold back. "This is fucking bullshit WAME," says Luke (though I am definitely hearing all this in Michael's voice). "Absolutely nothing cool about ripping people off with some lame computer estimation of my voice. Don't waste your time on this garbage." Luke also tagged Rockstar Games and the SAG-AFTRA union, since when the chatbot and tweets promoting it have been deleted. Fellow actors including Roger Clark weighed in with sympathy about how much this kind of stuff sucks, and our boy wasn't done by a long shot:
"I'm not worried about being replaced, Roger," says Luke. "I just hate these fuckers, and am pissed as fuck that our shitty union is so damn weak that this will soon be an issue on legit work, not just some lame douchebag tryna make $$ off of our voices." Luke is here referring to a recent SAG-AFTRA "ethical AI" agreement which has gone down with some of its members like a cup of cold sick. Musician Marilou A. Burnel (not affiliated with WAME) pops up to suggest that "creative people make remarkable things with AI, and the opposite is also true." "Not using my voice they don't," says Luke. WAME issued a statement expressing their "profound understanding and concern."
"This incident has highlighted the intricate interplay between the advancement of AI technology and the ethical and legal realms," says WAME. "WAME commits to protecting the rights of voice actors and creators while advancing ethical AI practices."
Fake promises, real injuries. (Score:3)
Don't stop us, we might cure cancer, we promise!!!
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And the guy has apparently found a good application of all those mad skillz you pick playing GTA. DNRTFA, but I hope the offending company was demolished with prejudice.
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What "real injuries?"
Do you mean not getting paid for work he didn't do?
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They didn't choose to use some random person's voice, they chose his. So clearly his voice has some value, and they decided to just take it without compensation. Compensation that he is entitled to, under the law.
Re: Fake promises, real injuries. (Score:1)
Not so fast, he works under a union and that union has made agreements profitable to the union bosses that allow use of likeness in AI applications. Hence his rant ripping on the union. Had he not given away his rights to a union, you may be correct and he would have standing, however at this point his union will have to do any legal work which they will not. People with skills should not unionize.
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That seems unlikely, given that he recorded the lines long before any union made any agreement regarding AI. That game came out over a decade ago.
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So why did the members vote for such a shitty deal?
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And you actually believe that? Sincerely?
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No, that is a fact. https://www.mwe.com/insights/n... [mwe.com]
Re: Fake promises, real injuries. (Score:2)
Don't steal, but where's the line? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a fuzzy, fuzzy line between producing a "Micheal-like voice" and attempting to get it 100% perfect. How close can you get before you're ripping off the actor?
However, if you're advertising it as a rip off... you're so far over the line there's zero question you need a smack-down.
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Apparently there are Right of Publicity laws but they're not applicable everywhere.
Re: Don't steal, but where's the line? (Score:2)
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I have a fix for all of it.
Unless and until we build one that's actually intelligent... AI should legally be considered 'special needs' persons under the care of the government. Any money made from them should therefore go to programs that support such people, any work they do should be paid minimum wage (per instance), and putting them to illegal use would then become a criminal offence of a whole new kind on top of the base charge.
There are a lot weirder laws out there, that one little definition would s
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That would be a wonderful policy if your goal is to shift AI development to other jurisdictions, such as China, without such silly restrictions.
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It will probably be subjected to a "reasonableness" standard, e.g., if a reasonable person would believe if was him, it's infringing.
Then of course how do you define "reasonable", which is up to the judge and what the lawyers can convince him of.
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Too bad meta moderation hasn't existed for a long time.
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It's not infringing the way you and the actor claim.
There are many people who do impressions of famous people saying famous things, and ALL of it is 100% legal noninfringing.
My favorite is Frank Caliendo. He does a great John Madden, Bill Clinton, and others. NONE OF IT IS INFRINGING.
Copyright is very explicit and these actors and big media have made up a firestorm of bullshit to pretend that reading public text or reading it aloud or sounding like the guy who said it infringes some nebulous "rights" that
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The courts agree with the actor, not you, it seems. The courts use precedence and statute and WAME doesn't seem to be contesting.
Please, point to a court case that isn't the court of public opinion. WAME forfeiting could easily just be them not wanting the bad publicity and/or the legal fight. From my understanding, gavron's statements seem accurate.
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It's not as if the company said something generic like "chat with a GTA character!" - the company promoted a conversation with a specific character which had been voiced by a specific voice actor. I imagine it's legal, given the actor's complaint about his weak union (meaning they probably don't have much in the way of contract protections); but it feels slimy as heck.
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Why does it feel slimy. He is a voice actor. The character is a cartoon (effectively). Do you think they have never replaced voice actors in cartoons before. How many different actors have voiced Bugs Bunny or Micky Mouse?
Does WB or Disney make it obvious when the change actors, or is it just a line somewhere in the end credits? It isn't as if the new actors don't attempt to give the character a similar voice. It might be fair to say the first person to voice these characters made an artistic contributio
Don't use their work and you should be fine (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a fuzzy, fuzzy line between producing a "Micheal-like voice" and attempting to get it 100% perfect. How close can you get before you're ripping off the actor?
You are only ripping off the actor if you use their work to train your AI without their permission. If you train the AI using someone with the same accent and perhaps follow that up with some manual tuning to make it a closer match then you've done nothing different than an impressionist and cannot be said to have ripped someone off since you have used nothing of their work and have merely produced something that sounds similar. Indeed, if you have a good impressionist you could even train the AI on their impression of the original actor!
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It depends on where you are, some nations have right to likeness and some don't. If they're trying to pass it off as a character that you have no rights to, well, you have no rights... until they use your name without permission, then they've associated your likeness with the name and the recording and now they're using your likeness without permission.
As I understand in the US you do have the right to your likeness, while in the UK you don't, so pictures of people have been used to advertise all kinds of o
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You are only ripping off the actor if you use their work to train your AI without their permission.
What's the difference between a human watching 100s of hours of an actor's work and training themselves to do a near perfect impression and doing the same with an AI? What's the fundamental legal and ethical difference between a neural network made of a few 1000 neurons in a meat brain vs a silicon one?
We allow humans to do impressions of famous people and even make money doing it, so where exactly is the line? For the record, I'm against what happened here and AIs using actors' likenesses without permissio
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What's the difference between a human watching 100s of hours of an actor's work and training themselves to do a near perfect impression and doing the same with an AI?
The original actor presumably created the work with the intent that it be watched by humans so they can hardly complain if someone does that even if that person is training to replace them. In the second case though you are using their own performance to train a machine in a way that they did not intend or authorize and then using that machine to replace them.
While it still might be legal to use a performance in that way clearly, had the actor been aware of where AI tech was heading, they might well hav
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It really depends.
If something is marketed as "Voice Actor Name Here!" , then you're trading on the person's image. If you're marketing on "Character from GAME/MOVIE/FILM/TV", then you're marketing based on another IP. Neither of these are acceptable. If you train an AI on someone's voice, you can't name it after the actor or the IP they come from. So for example if I made a GTA Michael-like voice , I would not call it that. I would call it "White Criminal Protagonist" and even then, I would not want it to
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That's a registered trademark. And a "famous mark".
Which is a different thing entirely from what's under discussion here.
"ethical AI" is code words (Score:2)
They did not use that phrase by accident: they are referencing the SAG-AFTRA "ethical AI" agreement by which actors (voice and otherwise") will generally be robbed.
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What I'm not sure about is how these groups of people &/or corporations with no moral compass can navigate being ethical in any human sense of the word.
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Resistance is Futile (Score:5, Insightful)
We now live in a world that, for better or worse, AI voice reproduction exists. If you record your voice and distribute it in any capacity, it can be reproduced now, and in the end everyone will have to accept that.
Focus should be on preventing fraud (via impersonation) as well as money-making off of someone else's voice without their permission or compensation. Bujt outright stopping it? Horse has left that barn already.
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Focus should be on preventing fraud (via impersonation) as well as money-making off of someone else's voice without their permission or compensation. Bujt outright stopping it? Horse has left that barn already.
Someone wants to stop it? Not the actor, judging by the submitted text. He clearly said that he simply wants to not be ripped off.
maybe pc gamer could hire the chat bot as a writer (Score:2)
...because it really couldn't do a worse job of writing?
"...our boy wasn't done by a long shot:"
"... has gone down with some of its members like a cup of cold sick."
Blech.
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I'd have called it amateurish and juvenile, but I guess if that's "British" to you, whatever.
US-based "hip" dialogue indeed is no better, and to suggest that our only choices are shitty writing "ala the English" or shitty writing "ala the Americans" is fairly pathetic and depressing.
AI response (Score:2)
This incident has highlighted the intricate interplay between the advancement of AI technology and the ethical and legal realms...
I bet AI writes their responses.
He knows how to get revenge (Score:2)
Ridiculous hyperbole (Score:2)
GTA 5 actor criticizes AI company that made voice chatbot of him
There, fixed. Sane people don't speak in clickbait-ese.
Perfect Application (Score:2)
Replacing video game voice actors seems like the perfect application for AI. Does anyone really care about the face behind the voice? In fact, if I recognize the voice it kind of ruins the experience. Video games are all about immersion and if you can generate a unique voice that speaks fluently and consistently, there's literally no reason for a voice actor. It also opens you up to more more variety and flexibility in dialogue. Procedurally generated voiced dialogue would be pretty cool. Impersonating a vi
2 separate issues here (Score:2)