Diablo 4’s Season 8 has seen members of the action-RPG’s Spanish community accusing Blizzard of using AI for the voices of its newest non-playable characters who, according to one player, “aren’t even speaking or pronouncing correctly.”
The eighth season introduces new boss powers and fearsome foes to slay alongside a series of changes to the structure of both its free and paid battle passes. While every season launch is expected to have some kinks for the developer to iron out, subpar voice-over quality for the NPCs driving its story can drag the whole experience down significantly.
Diablo 4 Season 8 Spanish Voices AI Use
User Lottus21 expressed their fear of AI use for Spanish voices in Diablo 4’s Season 8 over on Reddit, where they also shared a clip of the new characters speaking.
They claim that “there is no emotion and a constant bland tone on [the NPC’s] phrases.” Although some people were in agreement, several others responded by saying that what we’re hearing is much more likely to be a text-to-speech program interpreting the voice lines meant for real voice actors.
I don’t speak Spanish myself, so I can’t weigh in on how much nuance is missing from the dialogue, but using text-to-speech before adding the final voice-over is a standard practice in the industry.
Diablo CM Director Adam Fletcher quickly addressed the community’s fears of Diablo 4 using AI for Season 8’s Spanish voices, noting that the developer is “investigating this one.” Several hours later, he followed up by saying that “it is clearly a bug.
“We typically have robotic temp voices generated in-game prior to final VO going in. Something wasn’t plugged in correctly for this with the final VO. We will get it fixed up.”
No timeline on when we can expect the fix was offered at the time of writing, but, although this doesn’t excuse the oversight, we can at least breathe a sigh of relief that Season 8’s characters, regardless of language, are still voiced by human actors.
In the background, voice actors across the industry have been striking since last year, demanding protections from AI encroaching on their field of work.
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