Responding to a flood of criticism over the use of AI in League of Legends video ads, Riot Games said on Thursday that the issues raised with the audio were not the use of AI, but a lack of “correct direction”. It was given to a human voice actor.
Riot Games, when asked about Decrypt, pointed to a post on the League of Legends Wild Rift Twitter account providing an update on the situation.
“Hey everyone, a few days ago we released a Sivir tutorial video to show our players,” Riot Games said on Twitter. “We didn't give proper direction to our voice actor in the video, causing him to mispronounce Sivir's name. This is on us, and we will make sure that things like this don't slide in the future.
The drama began on November 23, when the Legends Wild Rift account posted a promotional video focusing on the game's character, saying the voice was “serious”.
Corizon eSports founder Ashley Kang responded on Twitter, “They could have hired any of the talented voices that work on Wild Rift or League Of Legends for voiceovers.” “I would choose to see this and feel more involved.”
“How come you let this slide when the AI mispronounces the champion's name?” said Kevin Dry, founder and CEO of Gallant Gaming.
Launched in 2009, League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game. A popular game in esports, League of Legends was a favorite of fallen FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.
In October, according to the Bankman-Fried conspiracy and fraud trial documents, FTX signed a seven-year deal to sponsor the League of Legends Esports series in a deal valued at $100 million through August 2021.
As with all NFTs, gamers have pushed back on the idea of using generative AI in games. But game developers are beginning to embrace the emerging technology. Studios using AI in games include Ubisoft, Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, Square Enix, Roblox and NCSoft.
Earlier this year, Activision announced that it would use AI to monitor conversations in Call of Duty games to combat toxic behavior.
“This new development strengthens the ongoing mediation systems led by the on-call anti-poisoning team, which includes text-based filtering for in-game text (chat and usernames) in 14 languages, as well as robust in-game player reporting,” Activision said in a statement.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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