Actress claims Tomb Raider IV–VI Remastered replaced French Lara Croft dialogue with AI voice-overs

Françoise Cadol believes an AI voice generator replaced her dialogue in Tomb Raider IV–VI Remastered. The actress has recorded French dubs for Lara Croft in Tomb Raider games and movies. After an August 14th update, gamers also noticed how strange the new voice-overs sound. Le Parisien reports that Cadol's lawyer is demanding that publisher Aspyr Media pause sales of the latest remaster.

The Tomb Raider IV–VI Remastered patch added some lines of dialogue absent from previous versions of the game. However, Cadol thinks Aspyr Media employed generative AI as a substitute for the authentic Lara Croft voice. The updated French dialogue is similar to Cadol's, but the audio files also exhibit some distortion.

Fans of the iconic franchise are upset that Aspyr would resort to an AI Lara Croft in any form. As detailed in TheGamer, the company already faced controversy when it admitted to using an AI voice generator for the Tomb Raider Brazilian dub. It apologized to actress Lene Bastos, who also voices Croft, blaming "external development partners". The publisher promised to remove the AI voice acting, which is the likely outcome for Cadol's case.

Why AI has become a common shortcut for publishers

Cadol is one of many voice actors and actresses who recognize a troubling trend in the gaming industry. As remakes or remasters have become more popular, publishers take different approaches to reproducing dialogue. In some cases, the talent may no longer be living or is otherwise unavailable. However, to cut costs, it's tempting to train an AI voice generator using the original samples to record new lines.

Gaming companies use artificial intelligence for more than just remakes. During Konami's Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship, videos of the event featured AI voice-overs that resemble the work of Hibiku Yamamura. The Japanese celebrity protested, and the company soon deleted the media. Konami explained that the software used in its AI live commentary project unknowingly relied on past recordings from Yamamura.