CD Projekt Red is using AI to preserve Geralt’s voice in The Witcher 3’s upcoming Songs of the Past DLC
CD Projekt Red (CDPR) has confirmed that the Polish Geralt lines recorded by Jacek Rozenek for The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past will be processed using Respeecher's voice conversion technology. Rozenek suffered a stroke in 2019 that left him unable to speak for months, and he had to rebuild his voice through intensive rehabilitation.
Rozenek still records every new line, and Respeecher then reshapes the audio using a model built from his original Witcher 3 recordings, including some 10,000 base-game lines, so the new dialogue matches the old. CDPR describes the arrangement as a special case driven by Rozenek's health, while its localization producer acknowledges that AI is a big concern among voice actors.
A stroke, a long recovery, and a brief return
Rozenek has voiced Geralt in Polish since The Witcher launched in 2007. His 2019 stroke left him unable to speak for several months, and during his recovery, he trained his voice for six to seven hours a day, he told Game File. In 2021, as his speech returned, he briefly stepped back into the role to record lines for a quest added in The Witcher 3's next-gen update, which launched in 2022. He told Game File that even that short session left him exhausted.
His voice today is noticeably lower and rougher than it was when The Witcher 3 first released in 2015.
Why new lines would clash with the old
Songs of the Past, announced in May and co-developed with Fool's Theory, is The Witcher 3's third story expansion and is scheduled for a paid release in 2027. It will bring new Geralt dialogue, battle cries, reactions, and one-liners, many of which will play alongside the thousands of lines Rozenek recorded more than a decade ago. In 2014, he recorded some 10,000 lines for the base game, and he later returned for the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions.
Around a year ago, CDPR "invited Jacek to our studios to kind of see how his voice sounds now," localization producer Mikołaj Szwed told Game File. The studio needed to gauge how far his voice had shifted, both with the passage of time and because of his health. The session confirmed the studio's worry: new lines recorded with Rozenek could clash with the originals, which would often play in close proximity. With Rozenek's blessing, CDPR contacted Respeecher, a Ukrainian voice cloning company it had worked with before.
How Respeecher reworks Rozenek's performance
Rozenek records his lines as he normally would, and Respeecher then converts the audio to match his earlier performances. "We basically delivered to Respeecher all the lines that Jacek recorded for us for The Witcher 3," Szwed said. Respeecher synthetic speech artist Dmytro Vasylets told Game File that the hardest part was capturing Rozenek's emotional range, from half-tones and shouts to groans and laughter.
Rozenek told Game File, as reported by Kotaku, that the goal is a voice as close as possible to how he sounded 12 years ago, and that he trusts the game's creators. He has not listened to the AI-processed lines himself. CDPR also said it does not plan to keep altering his voice in future projects, suggesting that his lower, gruffer delivery could suit an older Geralt in a game such as The Witcher 4.
CDPR's second Respeecher project
This is not the first time CDPR has turned to Respeecher. Miłogost Reczek, who voiced the ripperdoc Viktor Vektor in Cyberpunk 2077's Polish dub and Vesemir in the Polish version of The Witcher 3, died in December 2021 at the age of 60. For the Phantom Liberty expansion, released in September 2023, actor Janusz Zadura performed Viktor's new lines, and Respeecher converted them into Reczek's voice with the endorsement of his family.
The Witcher 3 case differs in one important way: Rozenek is alive, has consented, and is still performing every line. Szwed acknowledged that AI remains a big concern for the voice actors he works with around the world, but argued that this is a case where it can be used "ethically, with consent and also to do something good."
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