The Daily Populous Saturday February 8th, 2025 morning edition
Authored by pcgamer.com and submitted by alex040512

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, legendary actor Harrison Ford again took the time to praise Troy Baker's performance as Indiana Jones in MachineGames' The Great Circle. Ford offered Baker's performance as a counterpoint to interest in AI-generated digital actors trained on human artists' past performances.

"You don’t need artificial intelligence to steal my soul. You can already do it for nickels and dimes with good ideas and talent," Ford said in response to a question about digital likeness rights, alluding to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Troy Baker's performance. "He did a brilliant job, and it didn’t take AI to do it."

It's nice to hear Ford's continued praise for the game and Baker's performance, but it feels like there's a tacit criticism in there as well: "You don't need AI to steal my soul, you can already steal my soul." I don't think the dig was necessarily aimed at Troy Baker or even MachineGames, but rather our culture-wide inability to let characters, fictional settings, and even individual performances go. "There won’t be any need for me. There’s somebody behind me. Doing what I did," Ford argued, "And that’s the attraction. It’s what’s coming."

"My plan is to keep working behind that face till I don’t care what happens anymore," Ford added, seemingly unconcerned whether his estate or descendants receive royalties for any future use of his likeness. "I’m selling that piece by piece while I’m alive. I’ve been compensated. You don’t need to worry about me."

It's a philosophical perspective that I appreciate, and Ford seems optimistic that the quality, power, and genuine connection offered by real, human performances will win out over AI slop. I think I agree⁠—I definitely want to believe that's the case⁠—but until it actually happens, actors below Ford's pay grade are going to be better off hedging their bets. Videogame voice actors in SAG-AFTRA remain on strike against major US publishers, with questions of rights and payment related to training AI models with vocal performances a main sticking point in negotiations.

gangler52 on February 8th, 2025 at 04:56 UTC »

He's kind of right.

Like, it's been pointed out in the past that Captain Jack Sparrow impressions are a dime a dozen, and many people can do them quite well, but there's some unspoken understanding in hollywood that it would be inappropriate to just ditch Johnny Depp and bring in some no name guy who does the shtick just as well.

Could even be something as simple as executives thinking Johnny Depp's name puts butts in seats more than any actual element of his performance, but if that's all it is then Harrison Ford would probably be safe for the same reason Johnny Depp is.

TitledSquire on February 7th, 2025 at 21:27 UTC »

Damn that line honestly goes pretty hard, cause it’s true. A good voice actor like Troy can perfectly capture the soul of a characters voice and nail the delivery even if it’s not 100% 1:1. No AI voice will sound as good as that even if it’s closer to the original sound of the voice.