Has anyone at Homecoming talked about incorporating AI voices into the game?

[dgoold7601]

I feel like it would make stories easier to follow and AI voices are so well done now you wouldn't need to hire a bunch of voice actors. I just think it would help me get immersed in the story much more if all my missions were given to me through an AI voice. It might be a cool big next step in advancing the game and in-game immersion. 

[tidge]

[Troo]

With power comes responsibility..

 

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Accessibility of Communications in Video Games

What are the obligations for video game companies?

• Video game companies must ensure that any advanced communications services they offer, such as voice or text chat, are accessible and usable by individuals with disabilities, unless doing so is not achievable.
• To achieve this, video game companies may either build accessibility into the video game hardware or software, or use third-party accessibility solutions that are available to consumers at nominal cost.   When ensuring accessibility through these options is not achievable, developers and service providers must ensure that their services and equipment are compatible with peripheral devices, such as screen readers or specialized equipment commonly used by individuals with disabilities, if achievable.
• Video game companies that provide ACS must not install network features, functions, or capabilities that impede accessibility or usability.

[Troo]

https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/full-list/

[dgoold7601]

11 minutes ago, tidge said:

Why not both?

 

[tidge]

I'm on-board with Mother Mayhem being voiced by Martha Raye, as long as Seige and Nighstar are voiced by Jim Nabors and Ruth Buzzi.

[srmalloy]

36 minutes ago, dgoold7601 said:

and AI voices are so well done now you wouldn't need to hire a bunch of voice actors.

Ghu, do not get me started on all of the ways that AI-driven text-to-speech manages to mangle narration. The stilted presentation, inability to reproduce conversational intonation, garbled pronunciation -- AI text-to-speech still stumbles badly with homographs, in many cases picking a single pronunciation regardless of grammatical clues to the correct pronunciation. Take, for example, 'present'. Is this something that has been sent ahead ("pre-sent" with a long first 'e'), the act of conveying information to one or more people ("present" with emphasis on the second syllable), the current time ("present" with emphasis on the first syllable), or a gift ("present" with no significant emphasis on either syllable)? Is 'close' referring to something that is near (unvoiced 's'), or something that is being shut (voiced 's')? Which of the three pronunciations of "slough" should be used? Not to mention that AI-driven text-to-speech is still horrible when it encounters words not in the lexicon it was trained on, particularly when the word is taken directly from a foreign language.

[Rudra]

This has been pitched before. Two (three) primary issues come up for it.

 

Issue 1: Voice acting will make cut scenes longer than they currently are. People read faster than they talk and cut scenes in the game are apparently set at an average reading speed for time.

 

Issue 2: AI voice overs suck. Mispronounced words and inconsistently pronounced words throw off the message.

 

Issue 3: If not using AI, VO actors need to be paid for their work. And HC isn't able to bring in sufficient funds to do so.

[LightMaster]

1 hour ago, dgoold7601 said:

I feel like it would make stories easier to follow and AI voices are so well done now you wouldn't need to hire a bunch of voice actors. I just think it would help me get immersed in the story much more if all my missions were given to me through an AI voice. It might be a cool big next step in advancing the game and in-game immersion. 

Even if AI voice became accurate enough, using AI just for sake of it instead of actual voice actors isn’t gonna bode well for the game. Homecoming doesn’t use AI for their promos as far as I know, and for good reasons, such as authencity.

 

AI voice can end up sounding emotionless, sounding robotic, have inconsistent dialects (or lack thereof), can glitch out at certain pronounciations, etc. Alongside what Rudra already said.
 

Not to mention AI in general being very resource intensive; even the cheaper ones fonded in China can consume a lot of electricity just to run an AI to generate voicelines.

 

It’s also poor timing suggesting it, considering that SAG-aligned voice actors are now protected from AI, which you can see in this BSky post. So if this server uses AI generated voicelines from a voice actor that is part of the SAG and he/she/they discovers it, this can catch fire really bad, even if Homecoming is not a for-profit project.

Edited July 12 by LightMaster

[biostem]

I'll accept AI voices if and only if cutscenes are skippable by a majority vote of all those involved.

[Oklahoman]

 

[OverkillEngine]

4 hours ago, biostem said:

I'll accept AI voices if and only if cutscenes are skippable by a majority vote of all those involved.

 

How very glib...

Edited July 12 by OverkillEngine

[Lunar Ronin]

Your wish is already granted.

 

 

 

 

 

[PresidentDSG]

Nothing would make me drop the game faster than AI implementation of any sort.

[El D]

1 hour ago, PresidentDSG said:

Nothing would make me drop the game faster than AI implementation of any sort.

 

This. It's already galling enough that Homecoming supports AI 'art' but that's at least avoidable by skipping over that thread. Implementing AI voices or any 'generating' AI in the game itself would be a death knell for my interest and likely that of most of the players I know. The voice work in the Galaxy City tutorial isn't the best, but I'll take actual voice work over fake AI slop every time.

[Michiyo]

5 hours ago, El D said:

 

This. It's already galling enough that Homecoming supports AI 'art' but that's at least avoidable by skipping over that thread. Implementing AI voices or any 'generating' AI in the game itself would be a death knell for my interest and likely that of most of the players I know. The voice work in the Galaxy City tutorial isn't the best, but I'll take actual voice work over fake AI slop every time.

How exactly do we "support" AI Art, other than the channel in Discord because people complained that AI Art was being posted in other channels?

[WanderingAries]

20 hours ago, El D said:

 

This. It's already galling enough that Homecoming supports AI 'art' but that's at least avoidable by skipping over that thread. Implementing AI voices or any 'generating' AI in the game itself would be a death knell for my interest and likely that of most of the players I know. The voice work in the Galaxy City tutorial isn't the best, but I'll take actual voice work over fake AI slop every time.

 

Allowing =/= Supporting

 

Also, I DETEST AI voices. So many videos (especially shorts / YT) do this as a cheat way to get out "content" as fast as their bots can manage. They generally suck, can't enunciate, and often hurt my ears to listen to. Sure, many now "sound human", but that's it and it relies on the person / bot who feeds it to actually grammar / spell check their information before giving it over to the AI.

 

And then there's the whole "give people work" thing. People still need things like food and I'd rather see AI being used for things like medical pattern recognition for cancer.

[El D]

17 hours ago, Michiyo said:

How exactly do we "support" AI Art, other than the channel in Discord because people complained that AI Art was being posted in other channels?

 

It's been plenty clear that if a someone posts or promotes content that Homecoming doesn't officially approve of or want affiliated with them, the staff will remove it. Both in-game and on the forums/discord. So allowing spaces explicitly for the hosting of AI generated content, where players can freely post it, share the sites and prompts used to generate it, and actively encourage others to engage in using AI is a pretty clear signal that 'Homecoming supports players doing this.' Especially true with discord, considering the channel in your own example was directly made by the staff. The solution to 'some players complained about AI art' being 'we'll give AI art its own channel' is pretty cut and dry permission. If Homecoming didn't support generative AI or support their players utilizing it, those channels and threads allowing it and promoting its usage wouldn't exist.

 

Frankly, it just feels like an unneeded can of worms. We can't make Superman in-game because that's stealing DC's copyright, but I barely had to scroll back into the ai-art discord channel to find this.

 

 

That's not the only example of a player using AI to directly violate copyright in there, either. Maybe Homecoming's stance on AI content already is 'don't post direct evidence that you used AI to flagrantly steal an IP, especially not to our official channels' and this just slipped through the monitoring cracks, but even if generative AI is just limited to CoX-based content that still leaves the question of 'is this piece of AI content safe to post or does it violate some copyright?' as I guarantee none of those generative models are just trained on City of Heroes artwork and screenshots.

 

Backing up a step though, lets say there is an AI solely used for CoX-based content. That's all this generative art AI has been trained with and does. That still has the core issue of allowing generative AI to copy City of Heroes IP in the first place. Homecoming doesn't permit players to 'pretend to be signature characters or canon factions' while playing the actual game due to strict ownership concerns, but it certainly seems to allow players to feed CoX's IP into AI generators that neither Homecoming nor NCSoft have any authority over. Is that a sanctioned usage of the IP that the NCSoft license allows? Players telling AI how to more accurately make unofficial, unapproved City of Heroes content outside of Homecoming's control?

 

Seriously, personal distaste for AI and ethical problems aside, it just feels really dumb for y'all to have any official spaces allowing for this. I can't imagine the NCSoft agreement included a 'make sure Homecoming permits players to actively disregard our IP ownership by giving our content to third party generative AI companies' clause.

Edited Sunday at 09:39 PM by El D

[Lazarillo]

18 hours ago, Michiyo said:

the channel in Discord because people complained that AI Art was being posted in other channels?

You could have just not allowed it on the Discord altogether.  I'm in quite a few servers where that's their stance towards art posts. In light of that, allowing it at all does indeed come off as implicit support.

Edited Sunday at 10:50 PM by Lazarillo

[AerialAssault]

No need for it really. I'll voice all the characters. It'll be cheaper, more ethical, and rather than listening to a robot slur it's words you'll hear me slurring my words, which will be way funnier.

 

[golstat2003]

43 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

You could have just not allowed it on the Discord altogether.  I'm in quite a few servers where that's their stance towards art posts. In light of that, allowing it at all does indeed come off as implicit support.

 

I'm fine with a channel for it, where it stays. Had they allowed it everywhere then I would take more issue.

 

EDIT: As for the OP, no thanks. I'd rather the game stay text than deal with the problems that AI voices could bring, including the wrath of SAG.

Edited Sunday at 11:33 PM by golstat2003

[Jiro Ito]

Absolutely not

[Greycat]

AI voiceovers "suck." They've improved? Sure. They only suck moderately instead of a lot. 

 

No thanks. 

[Steampunkette]

On 7/12/2025 at 4:29 PM, Lunar Ronin said:

Your wish is already granted.

 

 

 

 

 

That's really cool! I'm happy that people who have visual impairments or reading difficulties have this accessibility option.

 

I think the best thing the Homecoming team could do to support that segment of the community is to promote Sidekick as an optional add-on for those with said disabilities.

 

But taking the time to go through all the missions in the game and assign voices to the characters with AI audio just seems like way too much work for way too little benefit and major ethical considerations.

 

Kudos to the developer!

[Chris24601]

If they were even to consider going voiced, I’d say instead of AI the community could donate their own voice work to the project. Homecoming is entirely supported by volunteer player donations. Doing some volunteer voice work would just be a different way to show support.

 

It would be a LOT of work though and really increase the size of CoH on the hard drive, so I don’t think it’s a particularly good investment of Homecoming’s resources. But if they were to do it, players volunteering their voices would be the way to go.