ARC Raiders dev U-turns on AI as human voices finally replace text-to-speech lines

The CEO of Embark Studios, the development team behind ARC Raiders, has revealed that the studio is re-recording AI voice lines with human actors due to a 'quality difference'.

ARC Raiders might be one of the most popular online games right now, but it wasn't without controversy when it first launched. As a cost-saving measure, the studio utilised AI text-to-speech voices as some of its NPC barks, a move that gamers weren't particularly enthusiastic about.

Embark maintains that actors are paid for 'all time spent with us in the booth', and also clarifies that, "For select usage, we also pay them for the approval to license their voices through text-to-speech for lines that aren't as essential to the immersion of the experience, mostly ping system audio."

However, as reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the studio has now reduced the number of AI voice lines in ARC Raiders and replaced them with human actors. According to CEO Patrick Soderlund, there is a 'quality difference' between using AI and real actors for the job.

"A real professional actor is better than AI; that's just how it is," he says. "We look at [AI] first and foremost as a production tool. We can test things internally. We can test 15 different lines without recording them, and then we know what to record."

Despite sticking by the fact that Embark will likely continue to use AI in some capacity, Soderlund remarks that it's not a cut-and-dry method of replacing actors altogether. "It's also a way for us to work, not replace actors. We don't necessarily believe in replacing humans with AI all the time," he says.

It appears that gamers are already noticing the quality difference between the AI voice lines and the new human ones. "I have noticed that Celeste's voice lines sound a bit better in the last 2 or so updates," remarks one Reddit user.

Another welcomed the change, saying: "I have many little gripes, but this was the biggest one."

It's worth noting that ARC Raiders does still contain some AI voice lines as not everything has been replaced by humans. These are mostly limited to NPC barks and location pings, though - most vendor dialogue is now voiced by a human.

However, Embark Studios hasn't shown any intention to go back and replace the AI voicelines in The Finals, its previous release that also utilised AI voice actors for its in-game announcers.

Although there was backlash to Embark's use of AI in ARC Raiders, that hasn't stopped it from being a huge success. It currently averages 24-hour peaks of close to 200,000 concurrent players on Steam alone with thousands more on PC.

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