Cyberpunk 2077 saw plenty of changes in its long-awaited Phantom Liberty DLC and one of those was the replacement of a deceased voice actor, which CD Projekt RED pulled off by using an AI replacement.
Polish voice actor Miłogost Reczek died in 2021, but his Cyberpunk 2077 character Viktor Vektor actually received new dialogue lines in Phantom Liberty.
Cyberpunk devs CDPR today confirmed to Bloomberg this new dialogue was produced using AI, alongside another voice.
The devs received the support of Reczek’s family to use his voice again, despite initially pondering the idea of replacing the actor entirely with somebody new instead. CDPR made the decision, they said, because Reczek was one of Poland’s greatest voice talents and the performance he gave on the Cyberpunk 2077 base game “was stellar.” Using AI, they were able to capture his performance and display it over the voice of somebody else.
To bring these new lines to life it required the use of an AI tool called Respeecher. For this, they recorded the lines with a new voice actor and then altered them to “keep his [Reczek’s] performance in the game and pay tribute to his wonderful performance.”
Players may not have noticed any AI tools were used at all as the character sounds almost identical to the authentic performances in the early portions of Cyberpunk 2077.
Using AI in this fashion isn’t new in the entertainment industry, but it hasn’t been without its critics since it began. One of the biggest examples was when AI was used to film scenes with Carrie Fisher for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker after her passing.
In the situation of Reczek and Cyberpunk 2077, it seems his family was very supportive of using this technology to continue his legacy. It remains to be seen how common this use of AI will become in the future in gaming.
