Lara Croft's French voice actor is pursuing legal action against Aspyr over accusations AI was used to imitate her performance in the recent remaster.
Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered is a release I somewhat applaud because even though Tomb Raider 6 Angel Of Darkness is by far the worst game, bad games deserve to be preserved too (plus the fourth entry, The Last Revelation, is one of the best Tomb Raider games).
However, my enthusiasm was quickly dampened when a host of post-launch issues came out, like Tomb Raider 4's port seemingly being unfinished, and that Brazilian voice actor Lene Bastos' performance was imitated by an AI, which Aspyr claims was done by "one of our external development partners – without our knowledge or approval." The company added in their message to Bastos that "we are working quickly to remove the AI content" with their intent for it to be submitted within the next few weeks.
However, as reported by Le Parisien (via The Gamer), Bastos wasn't the only actor victim to AI replications. Speaking to Le Parisien, Françoise Cadol – the French actress for Croft as well as dubbing for actors like the Tomb Raider films' Angelina Jolie – has issued a cease and desist against Aspyr. While Cadol acted in these games originally, new voice lines used for more accurate tutorials were added to the games.
"It's a game, my voice accompanies the gamers, we play together," says Cadol, who calls her fans who realized that the AI voice work was present, "the guardians of the voices." She added, "Very quickly, these buyers of the compilation realized that the voice of Lara Croft, who gives gameplay instructions, was not mine. It caused a real uproar among the community."
It is somewhat likely that the same issues in the Brazilian dub were present here, and Aspyr hopefully is removing this too, but it's unclear whether the company has been in touch with Cadol.
