Summary
Electronic Artshas patented a technology that could allow gamers to voice their in-game characters. The patent is the latest inEA’s efforts to introduce innovations in the gaming industry.
The gaming industry is no stranger to innovative technologies that help advance it further, and EA patented many of them in the past few years. The publisher filed a patent thatallows games to change their background musicto reflect players' emotions in April 2023. It also patented a system that lets developers generate more realistic models and animations and provides gamers with new ways to control their in-game characters in 2022 and 2021, respectively. It seems the publisher intends to keep the trend alive with its latest patent.
A report fromVeryAli Gamingindicates that EA has patented a technology that allegedly enables players to make their in-game characters communicate using their voices. According to the patent, the technology EA patented will use a synthesizer module, a voice converter, and a vocoder to replicate players' voices and have their in-game characters say what players want using their own voices. The technology effectively turns players into theirgame character’s voice actor, which could lead to various results.
The process behind the technology starts when a player inputs what they want their character to say into a synthesizer module. VeryAli Gaming mentioned that the input data can be text, allowing players to type in what they want their in-game character to say. The module then produces source acoustic features that serve as the voice or style the game wants - in this case, the player’s. Afterward, the synthesizer module will send the acoustic features to a voice converter, which then melds it with the player’s target speaker embedding to replicate the player’s voice for the in-game character.
EA’s patent has some gamers flinching at the thought of hearing their in-game characters using their own voice to communicate in-game. Many at Reddit’s r/GamingLeaksAndRumors subreddit said they’re not looking forward to hearing their voice through their in-game character and that they’d use the voice of a celebrity they like rather than their own to voice their character. However, doing so might open up copyright concerns similar to the one involvingvoice actor Paul Eiding, whose voice fans recreated through AI without his permission.
On the other hand, EA’s patent might lead to results that could rival the best or worst voice acting to date in the video game industry. The results could be as great as the voice acting inDisco ElysiumandThe Last of Usgames or as bad asPeter Dinklage’s performance asDestiny’s AI companion, Ghost, and the originalResident Evilgame. However, as the technology is only a patent at this time, it remains to be seen if gamers will ever get their hands on it.
