Prolific video game voice actor Troy Baker said he believes the generative AI revolution is a “good thing,” in that it will push people to seek out “authentic” experiences made by artists as opposed to AI “gruel.”
In an interview with The Game Business, Baker said there is no doubt “AI can make content way better than humans” and can “crank it out no problem.” It is important to remember, however, that what AI makes is merely content, not art, Baker said.
“AI can create content but it cannot create art,” Baker said. “And the reason why is because that invariably requires the human experience.
“There’s a fundamental premise to making art that people are not remembering right now, and it’s that it requires artists. People go, ‘Look what AI can do.’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, okay. I see what it’s capable of doing. It doesn’t matter.’ And we don’t need to diminish it, we don’t need to denigrate it, we don’t need to demonize it. We need to just go, ‘okay, it’s there.'”
Baker said from a business perspective, AI is threatening, but that AI may actually be beneficial to artists in the long run.
“What I see happening is that this birth of AI, and this burgeoning industry of it, is actually going to drive people to the authentic,” Baker said. “And we’re going to see opportunities of, ‘I want to go and watch this person sing this song live.’ ‘I want to see theater.’ ‘I want to read books.’ ‘I want to have this first-hand experience as opposed to the gruel that gets distilled to me through a black mirror.’ I think that it’s a good thing. It’s a revolution.”
AI use in game production, and AI voices, has become a hot-button issue in recent years, with the SAG-AFTRA video game actors strike that ended last year revolving around actor protections in regards to AI. Despite vocal pushback from some players, certain developers have continued to move forward using AI to help create their games. Embark Studios, the developer behind last year’s extraction-shooter-hit Arc Raiders, uses AI to generate NPC voices.
Meanwhile, actors like Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine have signed deals allowing for their vocies to be used by AI. Despite James Earl Jones dying in 2024, an AI version of the Darth Vader voice actor’s voice appeared in Fortnite last year, where it quickly generated headlines due to players tricking the AI into saying the F word and racial slurs.
Baker, who is a member of SAG-AFTRA, recently received acclaim for his portrayal of Indiana Jones in MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Indiana Jones actor Harrison Ford himself praised Baker’s performance and said “[Baker] did a brilliant job, and it didn’t take AI to do it.”