Over the years, Cissy Jones, a voice actor with many credits, including video games Starfield and Baldur’s Gate III, has performed countless fictional mishaps.
Death by gunshot is easy, whereas death by fire can be long and tedious, Jones said.
One time, she played an astronaut in space who woke up breathing tensely.
Photo: AFP
Ten minutes into the scene, she came close to passing out, she said.
“Imagine your paycheck being dependent upon being able to sustain that,” she said
If Jones and her business partners succeed, sometime soon she might no longer have to, as such work would be outsourced to her “digital twin,” a vocal doppelganger powered by artificial intelligence (AI), she said.
Photo: AFP
Jones is the cofounder and vice president of strategic partnerships at Morpheme, a start-up aiming to harness AI to reshape how vocal performances are used in everything from animated series to video games.
It is the kind of venture that lately has tech investors excited — and all manner of creative professionals, from screenwriters to actors, on edge. Within the video-game industry, workers are concerned that AI could eliminate entire job categories, such as quality-assurance testers.
Morpheme’s AI software records audio from actors and then creates a model of their voice that can be used to alter, expand and enliven future productions. Recently, Morpheme has been demonstrating the technology to entertainment businesses, including several top gaming companies that it declined to identify, citing nondisclosure agreements.
Among other features, Morpheme is developing a library of exertion sounds, such as heavy breathing or shrieking, that clients would be able to reuse throughout the development process. That way, actors like Jones would not have to strain themselves as much, and producers can get all the bloody screams they need.
The software would also be able to render a performer’s voice into additional languages, making it cheaper and faster for companies to translate products across cultures.
Morpheme is entering an increasingly crowded market. Last year, investors poured US$378.6 million into voice-related AI start-ups across 47 deals, data from PitchBook showed.
Some are using AI to clone voices, alter voices and generate audio from text.
Recently, labor unions have raised urgent concerns about how such AI-technology would be incorporated by entertainment giants. It remains a point of contention in the ongoing strike by Hollywood actors and is flaring up on another front, as well.
Last month, video-game voice actors with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) authorized a strike amid ongoing negotiations with top gaming companies including Electronic Arts Inc, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc and Activision Blizzard Inc.
About 2,600 performers work under the Interactive Media Agreement. AI has been a sticking point. Actors fear entertainment companies would use AI to reproduce their voices without permission or payment, pushing down the value of their work.
“The unregulated use of artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to anyone who makes their living using their voice, image or performance,” union leader Ray Rodriguez said.
Jones said that she believes that she and her colleagues might be better off embracing the technology, albeit under the right conditions.
“It’s not going backwards,” she said. “It’s going to get better, cheaper, faster.”
Morpheme, which is privately funded and seeking additional investors, is banking on the idea that amid the mounting anxiety and potential work disruption, entertainment companies would embrace some rules of engagement.
Currently, Morpheme’s 20-plus employees are in regular conversation with voice actors, Hollywood agents, entertainment companies and SAG-AFTRA, hoping to stake out some middle ground among the competing interests.
A spokesperson for SAG-AFTRA said in a statement that the union has had “ongoing conversations,” with Morpheme, adding that “any use of digital replicas” must include a range of provisions, including “safe storage” and “appropriate compensation.”
A spokesperson for the gaming companies negotiating the interactive media agreement did not provide a comment.
A key part of Morpheme’s sales pitch is that it has created a pay model that is fair to actors. Under a broad and flexible contract, Morpheme would let performers approve of how their AI-engineered voice would be deployed and would compensate them for its continued use through a licensing fee.
After a year or so, they would have the option to renew or renegotiate. To keep score, Morpheme is also developing technology that would monitor and track how the companies are using the AI-generated or modified audio.
Recently, Morpheme signed on to a new campaign from the National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA) that has a mantra of “consent, compensation and control” around the use of AI.
“If we as humans mess this up, we’re gonna destroy ourselves,” said Morpheme cofounder and chief executive officer Brett Shapiro, who has worked in tech and entertainment for decades, including a stint at the gaming company Cosmic Forces Inc.
Unlike their kin in film or television, voice actors for video games do not receive residual payments after their recording sessions. Some gaming actors are looking at the emerging AI technology as an opportunity to potentially collect extra payments down the road on top of a base minimum.
Under Morpheme’s contract, actors who are unavailable or unable to work on a new project can put their “digital twin” to work, and, in exchange, receive additional money.
“There’s a licensing opportunity for me as a voice actor to get paid for the generation of that audio,” NAVA cofounder and president Tim Friedlander said. “The more my character becomes popular and people interact with it, the more I get compensated.”
Meanwhile, unauthorized uses of AI technology are already proliferating.
“We’re seeing people rip off publicly available content to create whatever they can in whatever fashion they want,” Jones said.
Jones said she has found that fans on TikTok are remixing her past scenes with words she “never said before, very clearly robotic.”
Some creators have honored her takedown requests, and others have not.
“There’s no consideration for the human behind the original art,” she said.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort