Horizon Forbidden West voice actor says new AI tech usage ‘scares me’

Aloy is currently voiced only by Ashly Burch (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Ashly Burch has reacted to the leaked footage of an AI generated Aloy and she’s not angry, she’s worried about the future of video game performances.

It’s very clear that Sony did not want the AI video of Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West to leak out. They went to a lot of effort to scrub it from the internet and in doing so confirmed that the footage of Aloy speaking with a computer-generated voice was real.

The choice of Aloy as a guinea pig does seem a very poor one though, as not only does the Horizon backstory revolve around hubristic tech bros. destroying the entire world but Ashly Burch, the human actor for Aloy, is one of the most vocal opponents of using AI to replace human performances.

Or to put it more accurately, she’s against actors not being properly compensated for their work, if it forms the basis of an AI performance. That’s why she and most other unionised actors have been on strike for the last several months – something which is easy to forget at the moment but will become very obvious in a year or two, when the games they were meant to be working on are released.

The Sony tech demo did not sound anything like Burch and in a new TiKTok video she reveals that developer Guerilla Games has been in contact, since the leak, and promised her that they did not use her previous performances to create the AI voiceover.

In the four and a half minute video, Burch goes out of her way not to criticise Guerilla specifically, but speaks about concerns about the technology in general and why artists are currently on strike.

‘I feel worried and… not worried about Guerrilla specifically or Horizon or my performance or my career specifically, even. I feel worried about this art form… game performance as an art form,’ she says.

‘I feel worried not because the technology exists, not even because game companies want to use it – because of course they do, they always want to use technological advancements – I just imagine a video like this coming out, that does have someone’s performance attached to it, that does have someone’s voice or face or movement, and the possibility that if we lose this fight, that person would have no recourse.

‘They wouldn’t have any protection, any way to fight back. And that possibility… it makes me so sad. It hurts my heart. It scares me.’

@ashly.burch

let us speak on AI aloy

♬ original sound – Ashly Burch

The SAG-AFTRA video game strike started in July 2024 and there is currently no end in sight. If publishers do not give way than performance artists would find it very difficult to get any meaningful compensation for their work.

This would not only put their livelihoods at risk but leave games relying more and more on AI-created voices – which in many cases would be based on actors’ performances, but without paying them any royalties.

‘We’re asking for protections,’ Burch said. ‘So, currently what we’re fighting for is, you have to get our consent before you make an AI version of us, in any form. You have to compensate us fairly and you have to tell us how you’re using this AI double.’

AI technology is suspected to be at the root of the next gen Xbox in particular, and possibly the PlayStation 6 as well. Microsoft has already been promoting ways in which it could use AI to generate games content but the leaked footage of AIoy shows that Sony is also experimenting with its own technology.

However, Nintendo has insisted that it does not want to use AI in any substantial way and that it will ‘go in a different direction’ in the next generation.

Some indie developers want this label to be used for games without AI (Polygon Treehouse)

Email [email protected], leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.