An ethical debate on AI voice tech in gaming
Voice is considered a sensitive biometric information of a person’s identity, and yet it has become common practice by game publishers to collect in-game voice comms to train their AI for various purposes. The input session will look into voice augmentation in gaming, the regulatory playing field for game publishers and re-visit qualitative interviews (2023) with competitive players in Europe through an ethical and gender lens.
Speaker: Sheerah Kim (she/her)
As part of Sheerah’s CAS studies in Digital Ethics in 2023, she explored the state-of-the-art voice tech deployed for game developers and gamers, the current frameworks protecting the voice as biometric identity in the digital and recreational space of gaming and its potential applications that need to be reviewed through an ethical and gender lens.
In this input session, Sheerah will re-examine participants and stakeholders exposed to voice tech their ethical debate from an end-user/gamer’s perspective (based on qualitative interviews with the Valorant women’s team ‘ÆX-1 Nova’ in 2023) - and see how the debate has evolved over the last two years.
The main goal is create more mainstream awareness on what’s going on in the gaming industry. As a gamer, Sheerah believes that the space is not well regulated and monitored, and that according to her personal perspective, ethical frameworks and codes of conduct are lacking. The playing field of voice intelligence in gaming raises privacy concerns for individuals and needs a moral reflection on how voice data is collected, stored and processed.
The session will deep-dive into three topics (with three specific players in the field):
AI voice tech emulating emotions for in-game character voice overs through deep learning algorithms that created a new market of on-demand AI voices in the entertainment industry.
Video game publishers, developers and esports tournament organisers that have started pilots already in 2021 by collecting and processing voice comms to fight and eradicate toxic behaviours in the gaming community.
AI voice changers for gamers, content creators and streamers with generative AI algorithm (Speech-to-Speech), which has become one of the most prominently used voice augmentation on all gaming platforms.
Key questions surrounding the deep-dives
Motivation: What are reasons to augment voices and generate AI voices in general, and why has this been so relevant in the gaming industry? Can AI voices help us to preserve our own voice identity and privacy in the digital space of gaming? How can it prevent or amplify online bullying and trolling?
Psychological impact: Does prolonged usage of a digitally augmented voice alter a user’s own self-identity over time and does it trigger changes of their natural voices? How is our brain trained to process and categorise voices?
Norms and Biases: What are society’s biases towards voices? What is the gender bias in gaming that helps female gamers potentially to perform better with male voices and vice versa? How does that translate into other vocal conversational user interfaces? What inherent biases are limiting stakeholders to participate effectively in gaming through vocal conversational user interfaces?
Question of morality and moralism: Is it ethically legitimate to change a voice to alter perceptions during performance relevant instances? What are universal or sacred values in the gaming community related to voice comms?
Regulations: What impact does the European AI Act have on the AI voice tech industry centred around gaming? Where and how are in-game voice recordings collected, stored and processed?