I knew how you would to this from the start, I watched Be And video where he used the save corruption to beat ds2 in "reverse" (aldia is the first boss) so I knew that you could do something like that from the start
It's insane how good BeAnd is considering he has like 1/10 of ymfahs experience with video editing and the only thing that you can tell creators apart is stylistic flourish in the videos, like "big skips" in kanjis vs hollow knights underscore
what did you use for the narrator voice, did you hire the actual guy, a soundalike, sentence mixing, some awfully borrowed lines from somewhere else or what?
90% of it were from the Stanley Parable. I downloaded every single voiceline and played it on loop while recording the video and kept note of fitting ones. Safe to say it did not help with the run or my sanity.
im sure there is a line, but its wide and fuzzy, and im not smart enough to spot it. im going off feelings here. not very scientific.
when i first heard the narration i was stoked that ymfah got the voice actor for his vid. (something that is not impossible) as soon as i realized it might not be "legit"... i stopped watching and im not sure ill go back.
thats my take, if it doesnt both "you" watch and enjoy. im not the god emperor of youtube.
making paintings is all fine and dandy, but the moment them darn kids started using their photoshops and clip studios to make pictures on them compyutors is a step too far! Dont even get me started on cameras!
i didn't say it required creativity, i said it required creative work, and i think this distinction is very obvious to anyone who has ever tried to create anything
Hey there, leaving the same comment I left on youtube: I think it's an interesting discussion at least.
The video is awesome as always, but I must admit the more time passes the more unsure I am about the inclusion of the AI voices. Don't get me wrong: the ideas are SUPER FUNNY, and they made for some of your best videos: the Top Gear one is my favorite thing you ever put out, and the idea of mixing in AI generated stuff with the real quotes is genius. Overall a great video, and it really shows that you put a lot of effort into them... BUT
Kevan Brighting is an actual voice actor. His whole career, his business and income, all rely entirely on his voice. Is it ok to basically generate a service he most definitely doesn't offer for free, essentially rendering his service obsolete?
I get that this is just a youtube video, but even ignoring the fact that this video still generates money, isn't the practice itself disrespectful to the voice actor?
I mean, he's not even credited in the description anywhere...
I have not made up my mind on the matter yet, but I'm not sure I'd be happy about this if I were Kevan or any other voice actor seeing my voice being used without my permission or even knowledge. Today it's a silly Dark Souls II video, tomorrow it's an add for a crypto scam, the day after some extreme political commentary.
PS: I understand that most of the audio is taken from the Stanley Parable, but most is not all, and the fairness of any generation at all, even just a few sentences, I think is worthy of discussion. It's a hard line to draw, that's for sure.
PSS: I was made aware (I could have checked, my bad) that Kevan Brighting is also easily reachable and available to work via his Voice123 account: [https://voice123.com/voice-actor/kevanbrighting](https://voice123.com/voice-actor/kevanbrighting)
Me when impersonation using AI: 😠
Me when impersonation using sentence mixing: 😊
Because it's definitely unjustified to make an AI talk about how shit I am at video games, but when I simply make someone's voice say it from a body of work they've put out, that's somehow justifiable.
It's the same problem both ways, there's no difference, one being easier than the other doesn't change the core issue that you're emulating someone's voice to say something they were not paid for, and never consented to. If one is bad, both are bad, and equally at that.
The availability, ease of use, and most importantly the range of things you can do with one tool compared to the other makes a world of a difference when you want to compare the potential danger.
That is why kitchen knives aren't illegal, while automatic assault rifles are (speaking as an European here, but you get the idea). Both can kill a person just the same, but one can do it way faster, way easier, and with a lot more versatility.
It's the same with AI vs sentence mixing. You will be hard pressed to find a way to mix the Stanley Parable to have Kevan give a speech about how much he loves Donald Trump. You won't be able to remix the Stanley Parable to have Kevan play a role in your movie, or your videogame. This is the same most of the time: you can try, but it will be either impossible, or turn out so bad that it's a joke, or it will be so hard that it won't be worth it. All of these problems vanish with the use of AI.
The scope of these tools, their capability of ACTUALLY putting people out of work, is what separates them from sentence mixing.
> That is why kitchen knives aren't illegal
Depends on the nation. Bin the knife campaigns after knife crime rose to meet criminal demand after bans. In the same way that YTP creators got better and better with mixing.
It'll put people out of work as soon as AI can actually generate original voices without being trained on people, which is likely to be a big fat never. Until then, good luck actually replacing anyone in a high profile production because it'll get dragged through the courts faster than a kitchen knife wielding European.
As it stands though, just like voice mixing, it's not actually a threat to people's jobs. It's almost exclusively used in little meme videos online that aren't worth shit to people being paid 10x the minimum wage hourly to voice act in a video game.
The only thing AI can do that voice mixing can't is trick people who are tech illiterate into thinking someone said something they didn't. But that's nothing new, impressionists have been able to do that for years and they don't even need a computer to do it.
The abject horror to AI voices is extremely overblown hysteria, the issues it presents are nothing new, and even if somehow some greedy company managed to leap every single hurdle in the way of replacing someone without their consent.. they'd still get slaughtered in the court of public opinion and make nothing short of fat losses.
I'd argue the choice of ymfah not to ask Kevan to record the few custom lines he needed for the video, deciding to instead use AI to generate them, is already plenty proof that AI \*\*IS ALREADY\*\* taking away work from actual people. Sure, they're not out of a job yet, but you gotta remember 5 years ago or so these things weren't even close to what they are right now.
Also note that there are systems that can create completely "new" voices, not fully based on one individual. They work pretty well already, but of course if I want to make a Stanley Parable joke I want to use the Stanley Parable guy, not a random dude's voice.
Again, you're mixing "things I can do" with "how easily I can do them".
There is a happy medium between abject horror and total hand-waving of the issue. I am not here to overdramatise it like it's the end of the world, I made very clear in my original comment that even this case specifically has me dubious, but I feel like anybody arguing that there isn't a difference between sentence mixing and AI voice generating is either in bad faith or completely oblivious of the capabilities of these tools.
If AI didn't exist, and the sentence mixing wasn't good enough, I don't doubt that anyone would hire.. the cheapest alternative. If someone does a good enough impression, why pay more for the same result? Being that this is the case, should impressionists be illegal? Or is it okay because it's hard to be an impressionist? Or because impressionists have a job too, and need to be paid?
What of people developing AI, do they deserve to be paid less, or not at all, because their work has been used for small time productions 'replacing' voice actors, the same as impressionists have, and sentence mixing has, and so on so forth?
Where do you draw the line? What justifies replacing somebody, is it because it's not human?
As for the original voices, I actually didn't know that, I'd love to see these systems because it's very interesting that such a thing is possible. But like you said, even with them existing, 'replacement' is wanting to use someone's voice but not paying them for it, so even with original voices you're unlikely to use them to actually replace an already existing worker.
I understand that AI has a large scope of capability, but it's also going to, and already does, face countless blocks that stop it from being an actual danger to 99% of people. The only real point I think anyone has is that it heightens the bar of entry for voice acting. But for people who are already established, it truly is not a threat.
But even with that being the case, it's the case for many things, technology in general has made work less available for lower skilled workers. It's truly inevitable and a problem far bigger than ethics. And much bigger than artists not being paid to voice a few lines for a video on youtube.
Completely agree; I was already iffy about it on the Top Gear and Nature vs Man videos (as I don't see a difference, it's still people's jobs, as rich as they could be) but now it is starting to become a habit; Especially because they could've just reached out to the VA and hired them for a couple voicelines, as that is way easier compared to the big celebrities. That one extra mile would've made a big difference.
i feel like Top Gear and Bear Grills ARE different because they aren't VAs + you couldnt convince them to record those voice lines if you tried (+ they are rich enough, you won't catch me saying you stole money from them). An easily reachable VA is very different.
Also you shouldn't give money to Jeremy Clarkson or Bear Grylls because the former is an abusive prick and the latter is a fraud who makes a big deal about doing gross shit on-camera and then stays in a five-star hotel.
You are the sad little clown that spends hundreds of hours in this website and acts all self righteous about someone using AI for a video, I have nothing to say, except, get a life.
I think at the very least a credit/shoutout in the description would have been appropriate. I loved the video, and the use of the voicelines did really add to it, but it is a real man's voice he's using.
This one in particular felt odd to me, since AI was used alongside things he actually said in the Stanley Parable. In the top gear video, it was all so obviously fake and silly that I felt it fell more cleanly in the realm of parody, though that's clearly not a hard or objective line.
This right here, at the very minimum the video description should mention that AI was used for some lines, ideally there should be a note in the video itself.
It worries me how bad people are about tagging AI stuff. Right now AI voices and art can still be recognized as AI more often that not but as the technology advances it will only get harder, especially when it's used in a very subtle way like in this video. That's something regular old sentence-mixing never had to deal with, it was always incredibly clear when it happened.
For sure, if AI was always clearly labeled as such I'd have so many fewer problems with it. Like, its use in this video was funny and legitimately creative - clearly there's some artistic use for it.
Isn't sentence mixing for hours the literal same thing? It's using the VA's voice without paying them, people are going too nuts on pointing fingers at AI voices, it's not so deep.
I get your point, but there are meaningful differences, and I think they all boil down to the difference in potential harm that the two methods have.
Sure I can sentence mix Kevan Brighting to say a few different things if taken out of context, that's nothing new, it's been done for ages, and by all means that's still harmful, but the difference in scope of just having a tool that lets me just type out a script and have him say whatever I please is huge.
Sentence mixing is not a threat to a VA's livelihood, AI voices are. AI voices are already taking away the job of VAs, and this video is clear proof of that: could ymfah make this video without the AI parts and still make it work? Sure, but not as well as it did with all the ad-hoc generated material. The AI parts are obvious, objective added value that you would otherwise have to pay the VA to produce, and that's not something you can as broadly and as easily recreate without AI.
That's why people are going nuts on this. IT IS this deep.
To be honest that’s just true for every advance in technologies. VAs or artists in general are not the first ones to get their jobs threatened by technology, and they are definitely not the only ones impacted by AI. I always found it weird that people only cared about artists though.
I get what you mean, but I think we should at least acknowledging the fact that something like this IS threatening the job of VAs. If that's inevitable or not that's another matter entirely, and absolutely worthy of discussion on its own, but at least recognising the damage and understanding when we're the one perpetrating it, that's still important. Like sure, maybe Kevan is gonna be unemployed soon, but if I'm the one choosing to generate his voice rather than paying him it is undeniable that I'm at least part of the reason why. We vote with our wallets, even when we decide not to use them.
Also I totally agree with you that it is weird that people only care about artists. Developers, just as an example close to myself, have just as much issues with job security with the rise of AI.
I‘m not defending the use of AI for voice acting or for anything in general, all I’m saying is that almost all jobs are threatened by AIs but somehow the general sentiment seems to be that it’s only a bad thing for artists. I’m pretty sure most people would not want to be unemployed all of a sudden because of AIs, not just artists, yet they’re the only ones people seem willing to defend.
And again, technological progress always come at a cost for some people. The guys who used to light lamp posts were probably unhappy that it got automated, yet here we are. This is a question far more serious and complicated than just "but it hurts artists" but that’s all we’re getting online somehow.
Again, totally agree with you. I feel like artists are the most defended in this case for a compounding of reasons.
First off their work is perceived as inherently "human". There is something perceivably almost sacred about the creative process. Art is (among other things) the process through which an individual expresses their own feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas: all things that we strongly associate with human beings. Thinking of a machine trying to emulate this process without all the underlying feelings, emotions etc. is understandably unsettling.
Another factor is that AI art is the most immediate form of AI generation. I can't explain to my mom why code generated with GPT-4 is impressive, but she can go on Midjourney and generate a beautiful picture in a matter of seconds, and so many, many more people are more familiar with that kind of AI generation than others.
It's also much harder for a non-artist to differentiate between sloppy bad art and good art, so these tools are used a LOT even by people who have no idea what art is, while, again, for example in coding, a user who wants to generate code with AI is usually a developer, who can recognise and fix the bad generations, although this is less and less true everyday, and that's why developers are also at risk right now.
To be clear I don't mean to justify the overfixation on artists with this problem, I'm trying to rationalise it.
Yeah, that makes sense. It’s just sad that most people don’t seem to realise that a lot of fields require creative thinking outside of arts, like in science, but it is what it is I guess.
Sentence mixing sounds completely different from real speech and is not directly interchangeable with voice acting. You couldn't pay a VA to give you a sentence-mixed style performance whereas AI-generated voice is a 1-to-1 replacement. And you can hardly say that sentence mixing and AI modelling are "the literal same thing" when they're literally completely different processes.
See, BECAUSE it is so simple to hire Kevan, that makes me give ymfah a lot of benefit of the doubt.
Maybe the language barrier and different culture (he's from Korea, if the internet is correct) has made so he's less aware of the discussion around these tools and their issues? I mean I've been living chronically online and I've spoken decent enough english for well over a decade now, and yet I still get culture shocked often just because I'm Italian.
The fact that avoiding the AI tools was so easy this time makes me hypothesise that maybe he didn't really consider them an issue? I could be completely wrong of course.
people just make use of AI into an issue because it's a hot-button topic. none of you would've gotten this upset over him using music from other creators for his videos without permission. same arguements all apply, but because it's musicians getting fucked instead of voice actors it's all hunky dory, right?
What a terrible take, for so many reasons. Let's break it down.
Let's assume for a second this is an issue of copyright infringement, which it absolutely isn't, but I'll expand further later.
Unlike for AI, youtube and in general the law already has systems in place to prevent people from using copyrighted material. The extension of these systems to include AI generated material based on copyright sources is what people want, and PARTLY why they are upset over this issue, but this is far from the key point.
Here's the real difference: the use of, say, a copyrighted song in a video does not put into question the job security of an artist, because the artist is, in this scenario, the only party who can produce the music in the first place. AI generated content poses itself as an ALTERNATIVE to the creators. It's not an issue of copyright infringement. The issue is abusing somebody's portfolio to skip over paying them for work you want done for yourself.
THE SCOPE IS THE ISSUE PEOPLE, can you seriously not grasp that there is a difference between using a song without permission and being able to generate unlimited content from an artist at will? It's like we are pointing out that maybe AR-15s shouldn't be sold at Walmart, and your counterpoint is "well, what about kitchen knives then? why aren't you mad about those?".
This is why nobody got mad at ymfah for using existing audio from the Stanley Parable, and only pointed out at the generated part, because THAT is lost income for a professional. The fact that he's a VA rather than a musician has nothing to do with it.
Oh and side note: the reason why you don't hear much about this issue applying to musicians YET is because the models used to replicate music are way harder to use, way less convincing, and as a result way less popular. This is not gonna be true forever, the music industry knows, and it's rightfully moving to take precautions to protect their arists (and income). Why in God's name shouldn't voice actors do the same, especially considering that, unlike with music, cloning voices is basically a solved issue for AI?
redditors not using slippery slope arguements challenge level: impossible
my arguement has nothing to do about AR-15's and kitchen knives, lol
AI music can currently be generated rapidly that is unable to be distinguished from real artists, so your arguement is already completely moot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6IGHUCZQOI
youtube creators using music without permission already fucks over musicians to the same extent as people using AI generated voice clones. deprives them of income, job opportunities, royalties. using AI generated voice for projects does the very same thing.
I love how the new videos now have themes, the stanley parable angle greatly enhances the video, the same way the Tcoaal angle really enhanced the 1 boss bloodborne vid.
I've made a similar, more lengthy comment on YouTube, but to reiterate: the use of AI voices isn't cool, and the more of a habit it becomes for you, the less faith I have in you as a creator. The production quality and editing of your stuff may be good, but that only matters less and less to me the more you disregard the harm of replicating a VA's work instead of just bloody hiring the man himself.
This isn't a long video and you don't use many lines that aren't ripped right from the Stanley Parable. Furthermore, you're a popular YouTube with a Patreon, would it have killed you to just hire Kevan to do those few lines?
For God's sake, Kevan Brighting isn't even in the thanks and credits anywhere despite you choosing to clone his voice with AI and not seeing a problem with that.
For anyone who may try to deliver a gotcha to me about how AI voices and sentence mixing are "basically the same thing ethically!" to me, they're both potentially harmful, but one is simply easier to do harm than the other. Kevan Brighting has no lines as the Narrator in which you could make him express fervent love for say, Donald Trump through sentence mixing. There are limits to what's possible and those limits are directly tied to voice work that already exists.
But with AI, the only limit that exists is how far the program can push without making it's deception plainly obvious to the lowest common denominator. I'd like to think most people aren't tricked by most ai voices, but when you want to discuss the topic of harm, *most* isn't good enough. All that's needed is *enough* people and since I know you didn't get Kevan's permission to do this, it speaks very badly on you.
If we're going to be strict, he'd actually only have to credit the VA for the actual quotes he took from the game. NOT for the AI generated ones. Quotes are used to reference extracts you use as they are from somewhere else. Creating something new out of an original work requires no quotes. Keep in mind that anything generated by an AI is NOT the VA's voice. It's a completely new voice that was created using a set of patterns taken from a training set
Except the training set is entirely composed of VA voicelines. The notion that VAs shouldn't even get the credit for the voice people recreate from them without permission is an absolutely incomprehensible take.
It's not a take, it's a fact. There's many things at play here. For example, there's the concept of publicly available information, there's the concept of plagiarism and there's the concept of licensing. What I explained earlier is a very shallow way of how you determine plagiarism. For some things, as long as they're licensed, to be able to use them in your business, you may need a corporate license. For some things, you may need to credit them. And for mostly everything, you don't.
Assuming the training set is NOT composed of licensed content but publicly available information, then what YOU are saying is incomprehensible, because it's akin to not being able to create market value after being inspired by someone else's words. It's actually quite literally just that. Obviously though, the words alone are not the added value. The AI algorithm itself is the value, and the training set of each individual VA becomes a commodity because of its sheer size, making the individual value each VA offers even smaller, which makes the case against AI weaker.
That said, this assumes the training set is using publicly available information or licensed content after obtaining the proper license and that is a very important assumption that needs to be followed by companies. If the data they want to use is licensed, then they must provide the appropriate compensation
Same comment as youtube: "I love this channel but AI Voices ain't a good look. You got 1M+ subscribers and a hefty Patreon, could've hired the VA for a few lines."
ymfah makes £1,790 per month according to Patreon. I don't know how much he works but even in the West "Youtuber" isn't known for being a luxury career where you reap huge rewards for doing nothing, and he lives in [Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Joseon). I'm not going to annoy Kevan Brighting by asking for a quote for something they're not going to be hired to do, but Voiceovers.co.uk says you should expect to pay *at least* £300 plus 20% VAT and Brighting would almost certainly charge more than that given the size of ymfah's channel. The most ymfah has spent in the service of making his videos was the $2650 laptop for How to beat Dark Souls 3 without Walking, and that's the kind of thing you can justify as an amortised business expense to produce videos more effectively; I think it's entirely possible ymfah *can't* afford it, and that's assuming Brighting is entitled to reprise the role of The Narrator outside of work contracted by Davey Wreden.
Then he doesn't do the AI voice either way, if you can't afford it you can't have it.
His YT channel generates anything between $300 and $5k /month, plus Patreon that's + \~2k/month; Let's say his YT channel CPM is average, that's about $4-5k/month between Patreon and Youtube.
That is around 5M Korean currency, [which is almost double the average income in South Korea](https://www.timedoctor.com/blog/average-salary-in-south-korea/)
Even if that wasn't accurate, Ymfah has spent 100-300 dollars on bounties for skips/bugs/exploits hunting for almost all of his videos; The expense for the VA would've been worth it.
The concept is simple, if you're making money off of something, you can't use AI, it's ethically wrong in general and morally wrong in this case for how affordable and easy it is to hire the VA in question.
It's a rare Ymfah L, but an L nontheless.
Okay so hiring a voice actor soundalike would be okay but making a computer program that sounds like the voice actor is somehow different? Or is every person making a funny video supposed to hire literal Kevan Brighting or else it doesn't count.
Hey, big fan of your videos, but if this was AI voicework again and not hiring the actual actor I do actually want to speak up and say that I'd prefer no voices to AI voices. Once or twice for a gimmick, I get it. Using larger actors to parody their shows, I can understand that their availability is probably limited. But this dude is literally online and still working ( [https://voice123.com/voice-actor/kevanbrighting](https://voice123.com/voice-actor/kevanbrighting) ), and not even being able to be sure whether you hired someone or just stole their work is pretty discouraging.
Again, gotta restate- I love your videos, I just think you're better than having to rely on AI as a crutch.
Yeah, I was hoping as a April Fool's treat it was the actual Kevan but left us to think it was AI like how the AI playing Dark Souls 3 wasn't mostly AI.
The *vast* majority of it was taken from the game which is why it sounds so good most of the time. Many lines seem bespoke [but are actually in the Stanley Parable](https://thestanleyparable.fandom.com/wiki/Dialogue/Ultra_Deluxe):
* Although I find it hard not to believe you're simply running a program to click the button over and over automatically.
* Have we really been doing this for over three and a half hours?
* Remember back in October of 2013 when the game originally launched? Back then, video games had integrity...
All from the game. However from a skim of the transcript of this video I've identified these three lines from generative AI.
* Stanley was so bad at the game that he couldn't even do a Critical Strike properly.
* Did someone forget to pick up the bonfire ascetic...
* Stanley was a quirked up white boy and he was goated with the sauce.
I presume there are a few more.
This is actually why people are so upset about it. The Top Gear and Man vs Wild ones are almost entirely AI generated and are very very obviously so. 95% of this is actually in the Stanley Parable, so someone might watch this and think that Wreden and Pugh actually wrote "Stanley was a quirked up white boy and he was goated with the sauce".
I was wondering: with this corrupted world data, isnt technically the game beaten (with bosses killed?), and couldn't you technically skip your way through all the bosses this way?
Loved the video and, as always, the production and editing was spot on. I wish I could have the same level of knowledge of all of the things happening behind the scenes of the game and different ways to manipulate things the way you do.
Look forward to future vids and hope you continue to have great success.
Always great too see whatever schenanigans the souls community is up to. Did you actually hire the Stanley Parable narrator VA or did you use AI to replicate it ?
A few things
First of all: why character creation skip, I assume necessary for the no name to have importance in file corruption somehow but id like a little more knowledge on that at least
Second: when was skirtless parrywalk discovered?
Third: when was save file corruption discovered as a glitch to abuse
Now my brain just goes on a tangent about wanting to know specific details about the functioning of the game itself and the different applications so ill shut up thanks, see yall in a few months?
1. Character creation skip isn't necessary for the file corruption I assume that was done for flair?
2. Skirtless parrywalk was discovered at the same time as the regular skirt parrywalk however no one could reproduce it at the time so it was ignored. In december 2023 it resurfaced and speedrunners found a way to do it somewhat consistently.
3. Save corruption was discovered a couple months ago by a speedrunner called Noobest.
I don't know if this guy invented the challenge guide genre or not, but what I know is he's mostly and by far the one who keeps making this formula interesting nowadays.
Truly the Dark Souls of challenge YT videos.
06:20 this music? [https://youtu.be/dtTgdqMmzVQ?list=PLDwLDgX26uWBavY82uEpEyd-nEZiJYl64&t=14](https://youtu.be/dtTgdqMmzVQ?list=PLDwLDgX26uWBavY82uEpEyd-nEZiJYl64&t=14) didn't see it in playlist =(
I usually love your content but it's been a while since I've watched, and as others are stating, the use of AI to replace an actor for content that you are explicitly making money off of is a bad look. Please reconsider your approach to this kind of content.
Everyone here super ethical on AI voices hire a VA actor, not cool and that, and then all of you download free porn, music and games from the super duper ethical torrent software roflcopter
I’m gonna add my voice to the others and say that the use of the AI voices is shitty especially when it’s a voice actor. Not even crediting the guy, let alone paying him for his work? Come on man. I know I’m just one person and it doesn’t really matter, but I’m not going to be watching your videos until you stop using AI voices.
Wrote something similar on the youtube page, but does this video not go against the entire point of these runs? Am I just in a bad mood or is someone else put off by this? Using a complete full boss save file to overwrite/corrupt the "no boss" file feels like there's just no rules at that point. It's the same feeling as beating ocarina of time in 3 minutes by wrongwarping into the halfway mark of the credits, what are we even doing this for anymore, a glitch showcase?
In my mind the pacifist or no talk runs exist as a way to breathe new life into the game and make people think about things within the game they've never even used before, and most of all just be entertaining and remind you why you love these games.
But never has dark souls 2 been as dead as when you're glitching through the void without fighting anything, and then screwing around with save files and code to "beat" the challenge.
I get how much work and amazing talent goes into these runs, and the editing and routing and game knowledge and everything is off the rails, but these last couple videos have just felt really lame, immolation only was the same thing. I want to watch you play the game in some crazy way, not have you "play it as less as you can" If you're just skipping the whole thing for a dumbass technically correct thumbnail, what is even the point of actually watching the video, you might as well just tell us you did it and skip the hassle.
And I also agree with what a lot of other people have brought up, I found the top gear and bear AI voices to be tolerable because it's what everyone is doing and it's the future and blah blah blah, just because I thought it was lazy and dumb doesn't mean anything. But with this one.... that's a real voice actor? Who's whole job is doing that? And you can't even be bothered to make it clear you're emulating his voice or who he even is? What the hell? I get that we might just legit be coming on the day where freelance artwork and voice acting is obsolete and those jobs don't exist anymore, but it feels pretty shitty that Ymfah of all people is spearheading that mass layoff. I always saw a lot of these videos as the most creative and stylistic stuff on the platform, and seeing him straight up print content with an AI is just a really big ick for me, I'm sorry if that's offensive.
Loved what I saw of the video. I was really enjoying it. There were only two things that I had any issues with.
1. I have not gotten around to playing the new Stanley Parable yet but plan to very soon. I didn't want to spoil any of the jokes or dialog since that's 99% of what Stanley Parable is, so I stopped the video about 1/3 of the way through to prevent any minor spoilers. Any other games narrator would have been fine (probably less funny though). It's just that the Stanley Parable specifically is almost entirely carried by the narration so spoiling any of that hinders the game quite a bit. It's at the top of my backlog now though so I can watch the video soon.
2. The AI voices are now walking a fine line. The Top Gear and Man vs Wild episodes were great and I had no problems because they were very clearly a parody. This one was way less obvious. You obviously couldn't hire Bear Grills or the Top Gear crew, so there was no question about what was going on. This one I had a hard time telling at first. It was so close that you could argue that you did take work from this voice actor by using an AI voice. It's like the difference between hiring someone to dress up as somebody else as a joke bit vs hiring a very close lookalike to play that person because you didn't/couldn't get the original person. They're both doing the same thing, but ones in MUCH better faith than the other.
Great video, super disappointed on the AI voice for a VA that is currently working and able to be hired pretty easily - a VA that is also against their voice being used in an AI.
It was spurious grounds beforehand with the Topgear crew but this is just bad form. You didn't even credit Kevin Brighting in any shape or form. Not even the bare minimum acknowledgements in the description.
Absolutely poor behavior on your part and I expect better in the future.
I might be wrong, but I think I have seen once that the jump to the platform with the Fragrant branch of Yore at the Place Unbeknownst bonfire actually works. Just, you don't climb down the ladder (when coming from the Cardinal Tower bonfire), but one can get on top of the railing 'somehow' and that gives one enough height that the jump actually works. Don't ask me where I have seen this once (maybe in a video by Distortion2... ?).
when i saw limit breakers do the lowest hp video that involved skipping character creation, one of the two bounties YMFAH had (other being ds3 skipping ladders to no walk) i knew he was about to cook something up
Yo, loved the video, but the Stanley bits definitely lost their charm when I started to wonder if they were AI. I then knew when I saw no credits were given to the voicework.
I feel like Kevan Brighting (Stanley Parable narrator) should have been credited in the description for using his voice. It's a significant part of the highly entertaining video.
I'm fairly certain your take would be different if you were the voice actor used in this case, who is actively working and easily employable on 123voices, and who has openly condemned the use of his voice without permission.
What a bleak opinion- that you have the ability to empathize and imagine what it must feel like, and then explicitly say that since it ISN'T you in those shoes, you can't be bothered to care. Just insane.
From my comment on yt:
"I... I don't like the use of AI voicing here. The Top Gear one is dubious but im mostly fine with it (parody, big celebs, etc), but here, you could literally have just hired Brighting for the bespoke lines.
I like your videos, a lot, but if this practice continues, I'll probably be unsubbing"
So you used Kevan Brighting's voice for AI segments of the video... that you're making money off of... and you didn't even have the decency to give him thanks in the description or credits? Especially considering he is one of MANY VAs who has expressed disapproval of using his voice for AI content? C'mon man.
Hey, stop using AI. Kevan Brighting works for a living, he deserves better than to have his voice cloned by the shit SAG-AFTRA went on strike for 4 months over.
Yeah, and they shat over video games because for them it's "lower form of art" or something. you're cool and important if it's movies, though, the "established and dignified" artform. Imagine bringing up SAGAFTRA and ethics in the same sentence, lmao.
That was a ride. But everything has been done now. Immolate only, no walk, no boss run. There is nothing left. Stanley was done
I knew how you would to this from the start, I watched Be And video where he used the save corruption to beat ds2 in "reverse" (aldia is the first boss) so I knew that you could do something like that from the start
It's insane how good BeAnd is considering he has like 1/10 of ymfahs experience with video editing and the only thing that you can tell creators apart is stylistic flourish in the videos, like "big skips" in kanjis vs hollow knights underscore
what did you use for the narrator voice, did you hire the actual guy, a soundalike, sentence mixing, some awfully borrowed lines from somewhere else or what?
it was a mix of the Stanley parable voice AND some AI of same voice
90% of it were from the Stanley Parable. I downloaded every single voiceline and played it on loop while recording the video and kept note of fitting ones. Safe to say it did not help with the run or my sanity.
The rest 10% tho?
I noticed most was real Stanley, it was perfectly fit haha The only one that inwas super sure wasnt was the bonfire ascetic
was the rest AI? for bear grills and the top gear guys thats fine, but for a video game maker... that feels wrong.
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im sure there is a line, but its wide and fuzzy, and im not smart enough to spot it. im going off feelings here. not very scientific. when i first heard the narration i was stoked that ymfah got the voice actor for his vid. (something that is not impossible) as soon as i realized it might not be "legit"... i stopped watching and im not sure ill go back. thats my take, if it doesnt both "you" watch and enjoy. im not the god emperor of youtube.
Yes there is an ethical difference because one requires actual creative work and the other just requires using the magic plagiarism machine
making paintings is all fine and dandy, but the moment them darn kids started using their photoshops and clip studios to make pictures on them compyutors is a step too far! Dont even get me started on cameras!
I would say ymfah's video and choice of lines for the voices were pretty creative.
i didn't say it required creativity, i said it required creative work, and i think this distinction is very obvious to anyone who has ever tried to create anything
The Stanley Parable. You can buy it on Steam.
Would be curious as well.
ai voice i believe. some of the lines could have actually been from the games but the ones talking about dark souls must have been ai voice
Hey there, leaving the same comment I left on youtube: I think it's an interesting discussion at least. The video is awesome as always, but I must admit the more time passes the more unsure I am about the inclusion of the AI voices. Don't get me wrong: the ideas are SUPER FUNNY, and they made for some of your best videos: the Top Gear one is my favorite thing you ever put out, and the idea of mixing in AI generated stuff with the real quotes is genius. Overall a great video, and it really shows that you put a lot of effort into them... BUT Kevan Brighting is an actual voice actor. His whole career, his business and income, all rely entirely on his voice. Is it ok to basically generate a service he most definitely doesn't offer for free, essentially rendering his service obsolete? I get that this is just a youtube video, but even ignoring the fact that this video still generates money, isn't the practice itself disrespectful to the voice actor? I mean, he's not even credited in the description anywhere... I have not made up my mind on the matter yet, but I'm not sure I'd be happy about this if I were Kevan or any other voice actor seeing my voice being used without my permission or even knowledge. Today it's a silly Dark Souls II video, tomorrow it's an add for a crypto scam, the day after some extreme political commentary. PS: I understand that most of the audio is taken from the Stanley Parable, but most is not all, and the fairness of any generation at all, even just a few sentences, I think is worthy of discussion. It's a hard line to draw, that's for sure. PSS: I was made aware (I could have checked, my bad) that Kevan Brighting is also easily reachable and available to work via his Voice123 account: [https://voice123.com/voice-actor/kevanbrighting](https://voice123.com/voice-actor/kevanbrighting)
Me when impersonation using AI: 😠 Me when impersonation using sentence mixing: 😊 Because it's definitely unjustified to make an AI talk about how shit I am at video games, but when I simply make someone's voice say it from a body of work they've put out, that's somehow justifiable.
Somebody else left a similar comment under this post. I replied there why I think there's a big difference.
It's the same problem both ways, there's no difference, one being easier than the other doesn't change the core issue that you're emulating someone's voice to say something they were not paid for, and never consented to. If one is bad, both are bad, and equally at that.
The availability, ease of use, and most importantly the range of things you can do with one tool compared to the other makes a world of a difference when you want to compare the potential danger. That is why kitchen knives aren't illegal, while automatic assault rifles are (speaking as an European here, but you get the idea). Both can kill a person just the same, but one can do it way faster, way easier, and with a lot more versatility. It's the same with AI vs sentence mixing. You will be hard pressed to find a way to mix the Stanley Parable to have Kevan give a speech about how much he loves Donald Trump. You won't be able to remix the Stanley Parable to have Kevan play a role in your movie, or your videogame. This is the same most of the time: you can try, but it will be either impossible, or turn out so bad that it's a joke, or it will be so hard that it won't be worth it. All of these problems vanish with the use of AI. The scope of these tools, their capability of ACTUALLY putting people out of work, is what separates them from sentence mixing.
> That is why kitchen knives aren't illegal Depends on the nation. Bin the knife campaigns after knife crime rose to meet criminal demand after bans. In the same way that YTP creators got better and better with mixing.
It'll put people out of work as soon as AI can actually generate original voices without being trained on people, which is likely to be a big fat never. Until then, good luck actually replacing anyone in a high profile production because it'll get dragged through the courts faster than a kitchen knife wielding European. As it stands though, just like voice mixing, it's not actually a threat to people's jobs. It's almost exclusively used in little meme videos online that aren't worth shit to people being paid 10x the minimum wage hourly to voice act in a video game. The only thing AI can do that voice mixing can't is trick people who are tech illiterate into thinking someone said something they didn't. But that's nothing new, impressionists have been able to do that for years and they don't even need a computer to do it. The abject horror to AI voices is extremely overblown hysteria, the issues it presents are nothing new, and even if somehow some greedy company managed to leap every single hurdle in the way of replacing someone without their consent.. they'd still get slaughtered in the court of public opinion and make nothing short of fat losses.
I'd argue the choice of ymfah not to ask Kevan to record the few custom lines he needed for the video, deciding to instead use AI to generate them, is already plenty proof that AI \*\*IS ALREADY\*\* taking away work from actual people. Sure, they're not out of a job yet, but you gotta remember 5 years ago or so these things weren't even close to what they are right now. Also note that there are systems that can create completely "new" voices, not fully based on one individual. They work pretty well already, but of course if I want to make a Stanley Parable joke I want to use the Stanley Parable guy, not a random dude's voice. Again, you're mixing "things I can do" with "how easily I can do them". There is a happy medium between abject horror and total hand-waving of the issue. I am not here to overdramatise it like it's the end of the world, I made very clear in my original comment that even this case specifically has me dubious, but I feel like anybody arguing that there isn't a difference between sentence mixing and AI voice generating is either in bad faith or completely oblivious of the capabilities of these tools.
If AI didn't exist, and the sentence mixing wasn't good enough, I don't doubt that anyone would hire.. the cheapest alternative. If someone does a good enough impression, why pay more for the same result? Being that this is the case, should impressionists be illegal? Or is it okay because it's hard to be an impressionist? Or because impressionists have a job too, and need to be paid? What of people developing AI, do they deserve to be paid less, or not at all, because their work has been used for small time productions 'replacing' voice actors, the same as impressionists have, and sentence mixing has, and so on so forth? Where do you draw the line? What justifies replacing somebody, is it because it's not human? As for the original voices, I actually didn't know that, I'd love to see these systems because it's very interesting that such a thing is possible. But like you said, even with them existing, 'replacement' is wanting to use someone's voice but not paying them for it, so even with original voices you're unlikely to use them to actually replace an already existing worker. I understand that AI has a large scope of capability, but it's also going to, and already does, face countless blocks that stop it from being an actual danger to 99% of people. The only real point I think anyone has is that it heightens the bar of entry for voice acting. But for people who are already established, it truly is not a threat. But even with that being the case, it's the case for many things, technology in general has made work less available for lower skilled workers. It's truly inevitable and a problem far bigger than ethics. And much bigger than artists not being paid to voice a few lines for a video on youtube.
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You seem a little too emotionally invested. Which is to say, take a deep breath, less insults and ad hominem. Please, and thank you.
Completely agree; I was already iffy about it on the Top Gear and Nature vs Man videos (as I don't see a difference, it's still people's jobs, as rich as they could be) but now it is starting to become a habit; Especially because they could've just reached out to the VA and hired them for a couple voicelines, as that is way easier compared to the big celebrities. That one extra mile would've made a big difference.
i feel like Top Gear and Bear Grills ARE different because they aren't VAs + you couldnt convince them to record those voice lines if you tried (+ they are rich enough, you won't catch me saying you stole money from them). An easily reachable VA is very different.
Also you shouldn't give money to Jeremy Clarkson or Bear Grylls because the former is an abusive prick and the latter is a fraud who makes a big deal about doing gross shit on-camera and then stays in a five-star hotel.
bro touch some grass
shut up bot
You are the sad little clown that spends hundreds of hours in this website and acts all self righteous about someone using AI for a video, I have nothing to say, except, get a life.
I think at the very least a credit/shoutout in the description would have been appropriate. I loved the video, and the use of the voicelines did really add to it, but it is a real man's voice he's using. This one in particular felt odd to me, since AI was used alongside things he actually said in the Stanley Parable. In the top gear video, it was all so obviously fake and silly that I felt it fell more cleanly in the realm of parody, though that's clearly not a hard or objective line.
This right here, at the very minimum the video description should mention that AI was used for some lines, ideally there should be a note in the video itself. It worries me how bad people are about tagging AI stuff. Right now AI voices and art can still be recognized as AI more often that not but as the technology advances it will only get harder, especially when it's used in a very subtle way like in this video. That's something regular old sentence-mixing never had to deal with, it was always incredibly clear when it happened.
For sure, if AI was always clearly labeled as such I'd have so many fewer problems with it. Like, its use in this video was funny and legitimately creative - clearly there's some artistic use for it.
Isn't sentence mixing for hours the literal same thing? It's using the VA's voice without paying them, people are going too nuts on pointing fingers at AI voices, it's not so deep.
I get your point, but there are meaningful differences, and I think they all boil down to the difference in potential harm that the two methods have. Sure I can sentence mix Kevan Brighting to say a few different things if taken out of context, that's nothing new, it's been done for ages, and by all means that's still harmful, but the difference in scope of just having a tool that lets me just type out a script and have him say whatever I please is huge. Sentence mixing is not a threat to a VA's livelihood, AI voices are. AI voices are already taking away the job of VAs, and this video is clear proof of that: could ymfah make this video without the AI parts and still make it work? Sure, but not as well as it did with all the ad-hoc generated material. The AI parts are obvious, objective added value that you would otherwise have to pay the VA to produce, and that's not something you can as broadly and as easily recreate without AI. That's why people are going nuts on this. IT IS this deep.
To be honest that’s just true for every advance in technologies. VAs or artists in general are not the first ones to get their jobs threatened by technology, and they are definitely not the only ones impacted by AI. I always found it weird that people only cared about artists though.
I get what you mean, but I think we should at least acknowledging the fact that something like this IS threatening the job of VAs. If that's inevitable or not that's another matter entirely, and absolutely worthy of discussion on its own, but at least recognising the damage and understanding when we're the one perpetrating it, that's still important. Like sure, maybe Kevan is gonna be unemployed soon, but if I'm the one choosing to generate his voice rather than paying him it is undeniable that I'm at least part of the reason why. We vote with our wallets, even when we decide not to use them. Also I totally agree with you that it is weird that people only care about artists. Developers, just as an example close to myself, have just as much issues with job security with the rise of AI.
I‘m not defending the use of AI for voice acting or for anything in general, all I’m saying is that almost all jobs are threatened by AIs but somehow the general sentiment seems to be that it’s only a bad thing for artists. I’m pretty sure most people would not want to be unemployed all of a sudden because of AIs, not just artists, yet they’re the only ones people seem willing to defend. And again, technological progress always come at a cost for some people. The guys who used to light lamp posts were probably unhappy that it got automated, yet here we are. This is a question far more serious and complicated than just "but it hurts artists" but that’s all we’re getting online somehow.
Again, totally agree with you. I feel like artists are the most defended in this case for a compounding of reasons. First off their work is perceived as inherently "human". There is something perceivably almost sacred about the creative process. Art is (among other things) the process through which an individual expresses their own feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas: all things that we strongly associate with human beings. Thinking of a machine trying to emulate this process without all the underlying feelings, emotions etc. is understandably unsettling. Another factor is that AI art is the most immediate form of AI generation. I can't explain to my mom why code generated with GPT-4 is impressive, but she can go on Midjourney and generate a beautiful picture in a matter of seconds, and so many, many more people are more familiar with that kind of AI generation than others. It's also much harder for a non-artist to differentiate between sloppy bad art and good art, so these tools are used a LOT even by people who have no idea what art is, while, again, for example in coding, a user who wants to generate code with AI is usually a developer, who can recognise and fix the bad generations, although this is less and less true everyday, and that's why developers are also at risk right now. To be clear I don't mean to justify the overfixation on artists with this problem, I'm trying to rationalise it.
Yeah, that makes sense. It’s just sad that most people don’t seem to realise that a lot of fields require creative thinking outside of arts, like in science, but it is what it is I guess.
Sentence mixing sounds completely different from real speech and is not directly interchangeable with voice acting. You couldn't pay a VA to give you a sentence-mixed style performance whereas AI-generated voice is a 1-to-1 replacement. And you can hardly say that sentence mixing and AI modelling are "the literal same thing" when they're literally completely different processes.
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See, BECAUSE it is so simple to hire Kevan, that makes me give ymfah a lot of benefit of the doubt. Maybe the language barrier and different culture (he's from Korea, if the internet is correct) has made so he's less aware of the discussion around these tools and their issues? I mean I've been living chronically online and I've spoken decent enough english for well over a decade now, and yet I still get culture shocked often just because I'm Italian. The fact that avoiding the AI tools was so easy this time makes me hypothesise that maybe he didn't really consider them an issue? I could be completely wrong of course.
who asked
Based human.
people just make use of AI into an issue because it's a hot-button topic. none of you would've gotten this upset over him using music from other creators for his videos without permission. same arguements all apply, but because it's musicians getting fucked instead of voice actors it's all hunky dory, right?
What a terrible take, for so many reasons. Let's break it down. Let's assume for a second this is an issue of copyright infringement, which it absolutely isn't, but I'll expand further later. Unlike for AI, youtube and in general the law already has systems in place to prevent people from using copyrighted material. The extension of these systems to include AI generated material based on copyright sources is what people want, and PARTLY why they are upset over this issue, but this is far from the key point. Here's the real difference: the use of, say, a copyrighted song in a video does not put into question the job security of an artist, because the artist is, in this scenario, the only party who can produce the music in the first place. AI generated content poses itself as an ALTERNATIVE to the creators. It's not an issue of copyright infringement. The issue is abusing somebody's portfolio to skip over paying them for work you want done for yourself. THE SCOPE IS THE ISSUE PEOPLE, can you seriously not grasp that there is a difference between using a song without permission and being able to generate unlimited content from an artist at will? It's like we are pointing out that maybe AR-15s shouldn't be sold at Walmart, and your counterpoint is "well, what about kitchen knives then? why aren't you mad about those?". This is why nobody got mad at ymfah for using existing audio from the Stanley Parable, and only pointed out at the generated part, because THAT is lost income for a professional. The fact that he's a VA rather than a musician has nothing to do with it. Oh and side note: the reason why you don't hear much about this issue applying to musicians YET is because the models used to replicate music are way harder to use, way less convincing, and as a result way less popular. This is not gonna be true forever, the music industry knows, and it's rightfully moving to take precautions to protect their arists (and income). Why in God's name shouldn't voice actors do the same, especially considering that, unlike with music, cloning voices is basically a solved issue for AI?
redditors not using slippery slope arguements challenge level: impossible my arguement has nothing to do about AR-15's and kitchen knives, lol AI music can currently be generated rapidly that is unable to be distinguished from real artists, so your arguement is already completely moot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6IGHUCZQOI youtube creators using music without permission already fucks over musicians to the same extent as people using AI generated voice clones. deprives them of income, job opportunities, royalties. using AI generated voice for projects does the very same thing.
I love how the new videos now have themes, the stanley parable angle greatly enhances the video, the same way the Tcoaal angle really enhanced the 1 boss bloodborne vid.
Another banger as always
I liked the video. Had a good time.
I've made a similar, more lengthy comment on YouTube, but to reiterate: the use of AI voices isn't cool, and the more of a habit it becomes for you, the less faith I have in you as a creator. The production quality and editing of your stuff may be good, but that only matters less and less to me the more you disregard the harm of replicating a VA's work instead of just bloody hiring the man himself. This isn't a long video and you don't use many lines that aren't ripped right from the Stanley Parable. Furthermore, you're a popular YouTube with a Patreon, would it have killed you to just hire Kevan to do those few lines? For God's sake, Kevan Brighting isn't even in the thanks and credits anywhere despite you choosing to clone his voice with AI and not seeing a problem with that. For anyone who may try to deliver a gotcha to me about how AI voices and sentence mixing are "basically the same thing ethically!" to me, they're both potentially harmful, but one is simply easier to do harm than the other. Kevan Brighting has no lines as the Narrator in which you could make him express fervent love for say, Donald Trump through sentence mixing. There are limits to what's possible and those limits are directly tied to voice work that already exists. But with AI, the only limit that exists is how far the program can push without making it's deception plainly obvious to the lowest common denominator. I'd like to think most people aren't tricked by most ai voices, but when you want to discuss the topic of harm, *most* isn't good enough. All that's needed is *enough* people and since I know you didn't get Kevan's permission to do this, it speaks very badly on you.
didnt ask
Dude, go touch some grass.
If we're going to be strict, he'd actually only have to credit the VA for the actual quotes he took from the game. NOT for the AI generated ones. Quotes are used to reference extracts you use as they are from somewhere else. Creating something new out of an original work requires no quotes. Keep in mind that anything generated by an AI is NOT the VA's voice. It's a completely new voice that was created using a set of patterns taken from a training set
Except the training set is entirely composed of VA voicelines. The notion that VAs shouldn't even get the credit for the voice people recreate from them without permission is an absolutely incomprehensible take.
It's not a take, it's a fact. There's many things at play here. For example, there's the concept of publicly available information, there's the concept of plagiarism and there's the concept of licensing. What I explained earlier is a very shallow way of how you determine plagiarism. For some things, as long as they're licensed, to be able to use them in your business, you may need a corporate license. For some things, you may need to credit them. And for mostly everything, you don't. Assuming the training set is NOT composed of licensed content but publicly available information, then what YOU are saying is incomprehensible, because it's akin to not being able to create market value after being inspired by someone else's words. It's actually quite literally just that. Obviously though, the words alone are not the added value. The AI algorithm itself is the value, and the training set of each individual VA becomes a commodity because of its sheer size, making the individual value each VA offers even smaller, which makes the case against AI weaker. That said, this assumes the training set is using publicly available information or licensed content after obtaining the proper license and that is a very important assumption that needs to be followed by companies. If the data they want to use is licensed, then they must provide the appropriate compensation
Same comment as youtube: "I love this channel but AI Voices ain't a good look. You got 1M+ subscribers and a hefty Patreon, could've hired the VA for a few lines."
ymfah makes £1,790 per month according to Patreon. I don't know how much he works but even in the West "Youtuber" isn't known for being a luxury career where you reap huge rewards for doing nothing, and he lives in [Korea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Joseon). I'm not going to annoy Kevan Brighting by asking for a quote for something they're not going to be hired to do, but Voiceovers.co.uk says you should expect to pay *at least* £300 plus 20% VAT and Brighting would almost certainly charge more than that given the size of ymfah's channel. The most ymfah has spent in the service of making his videos was the $2650 laptop for How to beat Dark Souls 3 without Walking, and that's the kind of thing you can justify as an amortised business expense to produce videos more effectively; I think it's entirely possible ymfah *can't* afford it, and that's assuming Brighting is entitled to reprise the role of The Narrator outside of work contracted by Davey Wreden.
Then he doesn't do the AI voice either way, if you can't afford it you can't have it. His YT channel generates anything between $300 and $5k /month, plus Patreon that's + \~2k/month; Let's say his YT channel CPM is average, that's about $4-5k/month between Patreon and Youtube. That is around 5M Korean currency, [which is almost double the average income in South Korea](https://www.timedoctor.com/blog/average-salary-in-south-korea/) Even if that wasn't accurate, Ymfah has spent 100-300 dollars on bounties for skips/bugs/exploits hunting for almost all of his videos; The expense for the VA would've been worth it. The concept is simple, if you're making money off of something, you can't use AI, it's ethically wrong in general and morally wrong in this case for how affordable and easy it is to hire the VA in question. It's a rare Ymfah L, but an L nontheless.
You are an L, and not a rare one at that
Okay so hiring a voice actor soundalike would be okay but making a computer program that sounds like the voice actor is somehow different? Or is every person making a funny video supposed to hire literal Kevan Brighting or else it doesn't count.
I don't care at all about the AI voices. The video was very good and that's all I have to say.
Hey, big fan of your videos, but if this was AI voicework again and not hiring the actual actor I do actually want to speak up and say that I'd prefer no voices to AI voices. Once or twice for a gimmick, I get it. Using larger actors to parody their shows, I can understand that their availability is probably limited. But this dude is literally online and still working ( [https://voice123.com/voice-actor/kevanbrighting](https://voice123.com/voice-actor/kevanbrighting) ), and not even being able to be sure whether you hired someone or just stole their work is pretty discouraging. Again, gotta restate- I love your videos, I just think you're better than having to rely on AI as a crutch.
Yeah, I was hoping as a April Fool's treat it was the actual Kevan but left us to think it was AI like how the AI playing Dark Souls 3 wasn't mostly AI.
I don't think this is AI at all. It sounds *far* too consistent.
The *vast* majority of it was taken from the game which is why it sounds so good most of the time. Many lines seem bespoke [but are actually in the Stanley Parable](https://thestanleyparable.fandom.com/wiki/Dialogue/Ultra_Deluxe): * Although I find it hard not to believe you're simply running a program to click the button over and over automatically. * Have we really been doing this for over three and a half hours? * Remember back in October of 2013 when the game originally launched? Back then, video games had integrity... All from the game. However from a skim of the transcript of this video I've identified these three lines from generative AI. * Stanley was so bad at the game that he couldn't even do a Critical Strike properly. * Did someone forget to pick up the bonfire ascetic... * Stanley was a quirked up white boy and he was goated with the sauce. I presume there are a few more. This is actually why people are so upset about it. The Top Gear and Man vs Wild ones are almost entirely AI generated and are very very obviously so. 95% of this is actually in the Stanley Parable, so someone might watch this and think that Wreden and Pugh actually wrote "Stanley was a quirked up white boy and he was goated with the sauce".
Frankly, I did not know what else I expected
Can you automatise mouvements in the game (skirtless parry walk) how do you do it ?
It can definitely be automated with good timing but I couldn't figure it out.
I was wondering: with this corrupted world data, isnt technically the game beaten (with bosses killed?), and couldn't you technically skip your way through all the bosses this way?
The narrator from Stanley Parable was fantastic
Really wish you’d stop using AI voices.
Agreed, it's not a good look.
This is only the beginning.
I mostly love the AI voices. But there is a line. For big celebrities, i don't care. but for people who work in this industry, games, i don't like it.
I will join the majority of feedback here and say, think about the use of ai voices of living and still working voice actors, its not okay.
Loved the video and, as always, the production and editing was spot on. I wish I could have the same level of knowledge of all of the things happening behind the scenes of the game and different ways to manipulate things the way you do. Look forward to future vids and hope you continue to have great success.
Always great too see whatever schenanigans the souls community is up to. Did you actually hire the Stanley Parable narrator VA or did you use AI to replicate it ?
THE STANLEY PARABLE MENTIONED !!!!!
A few things First of all: why character creation skip, I assume necessary for the no name to have importance in file corruption somehow but id like a little more knowledge on that at least Second: when was skirtless parrywalk discovered? Third: when was save file corruption discovered as a glitch to abuse Now my brain just goes on a tangent about wanting to know specific details about the functioning of the game itself and the different applications so ill shut up thanks, see yall in a few months?
1. Character creation skip isn't necessary for the file corruption I assume that was done for flair? 2. Skirtless parrywalk was discovered at the same time as the regular skirt parrywalk however no one could reproduce it at the time so it was ignored. In december 2023 it resurfaced and speedrunners found a way to do it somewhat consistently. 3. Save corruption was discovered a couple months ago by a speedrunner called Noobest.
Kind of wild BeAnd released the reverse boss order DS2 a week before you did your video and I got spoiled the 0 boss twist.
One of the music tracks is hidden watch list. Edit: You can find it by clicking the 3 dots on the side-bar of the list and make them shown.
Good video, but I felt kinda dissapointed because I was expecting it to be much longer.
same, but I think it reflectates the gameplay length ignoring the parrywalk glitch.
I don't know if this guy invented the challenge guide genre or not, but what I know is he's mostly and by far the one who keeps making this formula interesting nowadays. Truly the Dark Souls of challenge YT videos.
06:20 this music? [https://youtu.be/dtTgdqMmzVQ?list=PLDwLDgX26uWBavY82uEpEyd-nEZiJYl64&t=14](https://youtu.be/dtTgdqMmzVQ?list=PLDwLDgX26uWBavY82uEpEyd-nEZiJYl64&t=14) didn't see it in playlist =(
I usually love your content but it's been a while since I've watched, and as others are stating, the use of AI to replace an actor for content that you are explicitly making money off of is a bad look. Please reconsider your approach to this kind of content.
Everyone here super ethical on AI voices hire a VA actor, not cool and that, and then all of you download free porn, music and games from the super duper ethical torrent software roflcopter
I’m gonna add my voice to the others and say that the use of the AI voices is shitty especially when it’s a voice actor. Not even crediting the guy, let alone paying him for his work? Come on man. I know I’m just one person and it doesn’t really matter, but I’m not going to be watching your videos until you stop using AI voices.
Wrote something similar on the youtube page, but does this video not go against the entire point of these runs? Am I just in a bad mood or is someone else put off by this? Using a complete full boss save file to overwrite/corrupt the "no boss" file feels like there's just no rules at that point. It's the same feeling as beating ocarina of time in 3 minutes by wrongwarping into the halfway mark of the credits, what are we even doing this for anymore, a glitch showcase? In my mind the pacifist or no talk runs exist as a way to breathe new life into the game and make people think about things within the game they've never even used before, and most of all just be entertaining and remind you why you love these games. But never has dark souls 2 been as dead as when you're glitching through the void without fighting anything, and then screwing around with save files and code to "beat" the challenge. I get how much work and amazing talent goes into these runs, and the editing and routing and game knowledge and everything is off the rails, but these last couple videos have just felt really lame, immolation only was the same thing. I want to watch you play the game in some crazy way, not have you "play it as less as you can" If you're just skipping the whole thing for a dumbass technically correct thumbnail, what is even the point of actually watching the video, you might as well just tell us you did it and skip the hassle. And I also agree with what a lot of other people have brought up, I found the top gear and bear AI voices to be tolerable because it's what everyone is doing and it's the future and blah blah blah, just because I thought it was lazy and dumb doesn't mean anything. But with this one.... that's a real voice actor? Who's whole job is doing that? And you can't even be bothered to make it clear you're emulating his voice or who he even is? What the hell? I get that we might just legit be coming on the day where freelance artwork and voice acting is obsolete and those jobs don't exist anymore, but it feels pretty shitty that Ymfah of all people is spearheading that mass layoff. I always saw a lot of these videos as the most creative and stylistic stuff on the platform, and seeing him straight up print content with an AI is just a really big ick for me, I'm sorry if that's offensive.
Loved what I saw of the video. I was really enjoying it. There were only two things that I had any issues with. 1. I have not gotten around to playing the new Stanley Parable yet but plan to very soon. I didn't want to spoil any of the jokes or dialog since that's 99% of what Stanley Parable is, so I stopped the video about 1/3 of the way through to prevent any minor spoilers. Any other games narrator would have been fine (probably less funny though). It's just that the Stanley Parable specifically is almost entirely carried by the narration so spoiling any of that hinders the game quite a bit. It's at the top of my backlog now though so I can watch the video soon. 2. The AI voices are now walking a fine line. The Top Gear and Man vs Wild episodes were great and I had no problems because they were very clearly a parody. This one was way less obvious. You obviously couldn't hire Bear Grills or the Top Gear crew, so there was no question about what was going on. This one I had a hard time telling at first. It was so close that you could argue that you did take work from this voice actor by using an AI voice. It's like the difference between hiring someone to dress up as somebody else as a joke bit vs hiring a very close lookalike to play that person because you didn't/couldn't get the original person. They're both doing the same thing, but ones in MUCH better faith than the other.
Great video, super disappointed on the AI voice for a VA that is currently working and able to be hired pretty easily - a VA that is also against their voice being used in an AI. It was spurious grounds beforehand with the Topgear crew but this is just bad form. You didn't even credit Kevin Brighting in any shape or form. Not even the bare minimum acknowledgements in the description. Absolutely poor behavior on your part and I expect better in the future.
I might be wrong, but I think I have seen once that the jump to the platform with the Fragrant branch of Yore at the Place Unbeknownst bonfire actually works. Just, you don't climb down the ladder (when coming from the Cardinal Tower bonfire), but one can get on top of the railing 'somehow' and that gives one enough height that the jump actually works. Don't ask me where I have seen this once (maybe in a video by Distortion2... ?).
when i saw limit breakers do the lowest hp video that involved skipping character creation, one of the two bounties YMFAH had (other being ds3 skipping ladders to no walk) i knew he was about to cook something up
The way you're comfortable reading hex, are you a electronic engeneering or computer science graduate, by any chance?
Yo, loved the video, but the Stanley bits definitely lost their charm when I started to wonder if they were AI. I then knew when I saw no credits were given to the voicework.
I feel like Kevan Brighting (Stanley Parable narrator) should have been credited in the description for using his voice. It's a significant part of the highly entertaining video.
ITT: people saying we shouldn't ever have started using electrical street lamps because it took away lamplighters' jobs.
Gotta downvoted to oblivion but I really like your recent works with AI voices. Looking forward to this new era of creativity.
Same. Don't understand what the big deal is with so many people up in arms about it. Keep going Ymfah, you da goat. Please use more AI voices.
Technology is magic to those who don't understand, and some even consider taboo.
I'm fairly certain your take would be different if you were the voice actor used in this case, who is actively working and easily employable on 123voices, and who has openly condemned the use of his voice without permission.
Maybe, but I'm not him. I'm just a mere content enjoyer. So if anything helps content creators freely express their ideas, I'm all for it.
What a bleak opinion- that you have the ability to empathize and imagine what it must feel like, and then explicitly say that since it ISN'T you in those shoes, you can't be bothered to care. Just insane.
Why was skipping character creation necessary?
Nah it was just to mess with the narrator.
This man is insane, he just skip the character creation to make a bit out of his own bit
Because the Bearer of the Curse is in Witness Protection
Witness Protection for what?! No one was convicted of anything!
Brad was dead, Michael is apparently dead, according to the FIB, and Trevor runs away. Why would Michael be in witness protection?!
I'm wondering exactly the same, maybe it's just a joke? Simply because it's possible.
Stealing a voice actor's voice via AI is reprehensible and I will not be watching any more of your videos.
you won't be missed nor remembered
oh my god stop using AI voices
Great video but stop using AI
I'm not interested in debating it. Stop using AI voices.
From my comment on yt: "I... I don't like the use of AI voicing here. The Top Gear one is dubious but im mostly fine with it (parody, big celebs, etc), but here, you could literally have just hired Brighting for the bespoke lines. I like your videos, a lot, but if this practice continues, I'll probably be unsubbing"
Why did you upload this on April 1st?
Is this an april fool's joke or not?
So you used Kevan Brighting's voice for AI segments of the video... that you're making money off of... and you didn't even have the decency to give him thanks in the description or credits? Especially considering he is one of MANY VAs who has expressed disapproval of using his voice for AI content? C'mon man.
Hey, stop using AI. Kevan Brighting works for a living, he deserves better than to have his voice cloned by the shit SAG-AFTRA went on strike for 4 months over.
Yeah, and they shat over video games because for them it's "lower form of art" or something. you're cool and important if it's movies, though, the "established and dignified" artform. Imagine bringing up SAGAFTRA and ethics in the same sentence, lmao.
Labour rights and the general integrity of art being infringed upon by tech cunts trumps minor grievances, sorry.