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The AI voicework feels off

HalaeHalae Member, Alpha Two
edited November 7 in General Discussion
I can't be the only one that feels like the few lines of machine-VA we've gotten feels weird and wrong. Like, I don't have any inherent problems with language models and such like that as long as everything is sourced ethically, but all the characters that have voices right now sound... drunk. Or maybe high. Their speech is slow, plodding, has the wrong cadence, mispronounces colloquialisms, mispronounces actual words rarely, and just in general feels wrong?

I'd actually prefer no VA to what we have now, since every time I hear it I try to blast through it as fast as possible so that I don't have to listen to it, because it falls into a kind of auditory uncanny valley. I don't know if there's a way to fix that using the language models that are currently market-available.

Comments

  • TyranthraxusTyranthraxus Member, Alpha Two
    Would still prefer the AI voice-stuff, personally. I don't want AoC becoming another FF all-text game.
  • VissoxVissox Member, Alpha Two
    Yeah AI voice is ass, get real VA or get rid of it IMO.
  • CaerylCaeryl Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Yeah, it's really bad. Even for a first pass, this probably should've stayed in the bin until they fixed the recordings significantly.

    'ere turning into 'air' half the time, the awkwardly long pauses, emphasis in the wrong places consistently

    I'd rather the team actually just read the lines themselves. It'd turn out better than this
  • VissoxVissox Member, Alpha Two
    Why even have the AI read it live? Why not do it a few times, take the best take and save it as an audio file.
    Surely generating new voice lines every time isn't good for performance.
  • CaerylCaeryl Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Vissox wrote: »
    Why even have the AI read it live? Why not do it a few times, take the best take and save it as an audio file.
    Surely generating new voice lines every time isn't good for performance.

    It's not doing it fresh, judging by the various mismatches in text to audio
  • Tahiti02Tahiti02 Member, Alpha Two
    The AI voice-over needs work for sure but they should improve it, not remove it. I and probably 90% of people dont read quest text because its boring. But when I added the AI add-on to WoW classic, I actually listened to the entire story.

    Intrepid needs to keep developing the tech and it will be great. On a side note, let them develop more instead of 3 days into alpha 2 demanding features be removed because they aren't perfect.
  • HalaeHalae Member, Alpha Two
    Tahiti02 wrote: »
    On a side note, let them develop more instead of 3 days into alpha 2 demanding features be removed because they aren't perfect.
    If you read the original post, my statement was "the current quality level is unacceptable". Which is entirely appropriate feedback. I'd be fine with improving or removing, I just don't want it to stay as is.
  • nanfoodlenanfoodle Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    edited October 27
    This is just at its roughest stage, they just starting to roll this out. They know it's not close to good, forget working as intended.
  • HalaeHalae Member, Alpha Two
    Still gotta mention it. That's what feedback is for.
  • nranra Member, Alpha Two
    edited November 7
    First off, I for the most part enjoyed the AI voiceovers.

    But Tradesmanager Hernet needs work. I re-read/relistened to every conversation with him atleast 4 times
    due to how horribly brainfudging his AI voice was.

    I'd prefer him not losing the flavour of the text, but rather have the AI voice being able to better
    deliver the lines.

    Example clip: https://www.twitch.tv/nratv/clip/AcceptablePlumpRabbitAllenHuhu-wSSiy8LP0zUdFhNl
  • VaknarVaknar Member, Staff
    Merging AI voice conversations here :)
    community_management.gif
  • IffithyIffithy Member, Alpha Two
    I dunno. The a ai voice is laughable. But I honestly just imagined every single person who talked like that as uneducated bumpkins and it made it actually enjoyable. That being said I barely made out of lions hold. So I dunno if there is a lot more/worse stuff out there
  • PlasquarPlasquar Member, Alpha Two
    I like the path they have chosen.
    They’re using their own form of AI voices, which they produce in-house within the company.
    And in the Alpha streams, it was already mentioned that they’ll still be fine-tuning the voices, so what we’ve heard so far is only the 'raw' version. 979.gif
    Frequently found here.
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  • PunktePunkte Member, Alpha Two
    The beauty of AI is that its going to take them a little bit to fine tune the models but once they do they can rapidly deploy new and different voices basically on the fly, just feeding it NPC quest dialogue.

    Going to be some growing pains for now but it will improve drastically by the time the game releases.
  • CarlisleCarlisle Member, Alpha Two
    Maybe improve? yes. Remove? definitely not, i liked that
  • VexedVirtuosoVexedVirtuoso Member, Alpha Two
    It's awful and needs to be done away with. Hell, I'll read lines for free (and have the setup to do it) rather than see "AI" slop ruin an otherwise promising game.
  • zheta42zheta42 Member, Alpha Two
    I had my sound off so I didn't hear NPC speech. Only found out about it reading the impressions thread.

    Does anyone know how much machine learning/"AI" is used in this game? I don't typically buy or support games that use generative content or art.
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