Aloy Voice Actor Ashly Burch 'Worried About This Art Form' After Horizon Zero Dawn AI Demo Leaks
Voice actor Ashly Burch responded to an internal Sony tech demo featuring a generative-AI controlled version of the hero she plays in the Horizon Zero Dawn games, Aloy, saying it's exactly why she and other game performers are currently on strike. 'I am worried for this art form,' she told fans in a new TikTok video.
The leaked demo reported by The Verge showed Aloy carrying on a conversation with a Sony engineer by generating computer-voiced responses in real-time. It was an extremely crude interaction, but behind its obvious limitations was a stark warning about how the technology might be used in games once it improves. One of those potential consequences includes harvesting performances from real actors and then replacing them with digital replicas, as striking SAG-AFTRA members recently claimed.
'Guerrilla reached out to let me know that the demo didn't reflect anything that was actively in development,' said Burch—who also stars in the Apple parody of the game industry called Mythic Quest—in her recent video. 'They didn't use any of my performance for the demo, none of my facial or voice data. Guerrilla owns Aloy as a character. So all that said, I feel worried, and not worried about Guerilla specifically, or Horizon, or my performance, or my career specifically even, I feel worried about this art form, game performance as an art form.'
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Burch explained how SAG-AFTRA, of which she's a member, has been on strike with many of the biggest video game companies—including Activision, Electronic Arts, and others—over AI protections, and pointed to the Aloy tech demo as a perfect example of what the group is fighting for. Burch noted that the performance rules the actors are asking companies to sign onto have already been agree to by others in various interim agreements.
'I just imagine a video like this coming out that does have someone's performance attached to it, that does have someone's face, or voice, or movement, and the possibility that if we lose this fight that person would have no recourse, they wouldn't have any protections, and way to fight back, and that possibility makes me so sad, it breaks my heart, it scares me,' she said.
'We have proposed a deal that includes...industry-leading terms of use for AI digital replicas in-game and additional compensation for the use of an actor's performance in other games,' a spokesperson Audrey Cooling of the game company bargaining group said in a statement last week. 'We have made meaningful progress and are eager to return to the bargaining table to reach a deal.'
Burch suggested it's not enough. 'The technology isn't the problem, game companies wanting to use the technology isn't the problem,' she continued in her video. 'We're on strike and the bargaining group will not agree to give us common sense protections. I support the strike, I've always supported the strike, I believe fighting is what we have to do to protect the future and longevity of this career we all love so much.'
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