The Witcher 3's Geralt voice actor says AI is dangerous: it deprives me of my income

Now that AI technology is coming in full force, voice actors and motion capture actors have begun to be wary, fearing that the top management will decide to use AI to replace them, depriving them of their jobs and income. Recently, Doug Cockle, the voice actor of Geralt in "The Witcher 3", expressed his views on the controversy over AI technology.

Doug Cockle was recently interviewed by foreign media IGN. He said that due to technological progress, the advent of the AI ​​era is inevitable, but what is really scary is not the technology itself, but the people who abuse AI. Cockle said: "The advent of the AI ​​era is inevitable, but once the development team decides to adopt AI technology, we are 100% unable to predict what results this will bring. Now they are using AI to do various things, such as filling in backgrounds, generating NPC voices, etc., but this is actually a sad thing, because these voices use human voices and digitize them, and then use them to express words that the person has never said. This behavior is not very ethical, so it has caused so much controversy."

Cockle also said that a few years ago, an AI technology company contacted him and hoped to include his voice in the database. Cockle immediately refused. "I would refuse in the past, and I still say no now. Of course, this is not to say that I hate AI. I think for voice actors, especially voice actors who play the leading roles, people use AI to steal our voices. This is already a reality. I have encountered it many times, but I can't supervise it because it will waste a lot of time. It is neither meaningful nor effective."

Cockle also used the example of fans using AI to create mods. He believes that even if people are not malicious, it will invisibly affect the voice actors themselves. He said: "Every time someone does this, it is equivalent to depriving me and other voice actors of their income. We can only watch our voices being abused by people. We can't easily accept that AI can do bad things in politics or moral behavior if it can be used commercially."

Cockle gave an example: "When someone uses AI to use Geralt's voice - my voice - to create some fake news or false opinions, people will spread these untrue things, and then AI will become a dangerous existence. So the key to the problem is not AI, but the people who use this technology."