UPDATE: Troy Baker backs a voice based NFT site but won’t be selling his own voice

Time Stamp: January 14, 2022 9:35 AM

Renowned video game voice actor Troy Baker has partnered with Voiceverse, a company that will use AI to real time voice simulations which you can buy as NFTs. They are claiming you will be able to say something in your own voice and their AI will automatically change it so you sound like someone else.

You may be wondering why Troy Baker is supporting an company that can put him out of a job. Despite singing the praises of this new service it turns out our Troy won’t be supplying his own voice to the AI generator. In fact there’s no mention of what these new voices will be like, it does not seem like you will suddenly be able to talk like Mary Berry, the Pope or Stephen Fry.  In fact it would be very unlikely a celebrity would allow their voice to be turned in to a NFT as you could own their voice and take over any VO jobs they have for half the price they charge and there’s nothing the celeb could do about it.

So, what do you get with your Voiceverse NFT?

Voice NFT is a 2nd generation NFT built with AI and high-functioning utility that provides you an ownership to a unique voice in the Metaverse.
You can use it for in-game chats, zoom calls, YouTube & Tiktok, and create whatever content you desire, and even mix your voice with other Voice NFTs!

The reaction to Troy’s announcement has been overwhelmingly negative with thousands of tweets from his fans expressing their dismay.

Voiceverse themselves have posted a series of tweets explaining why they are so much better than a jpg, pointing out you can’t ‘right click’ audio and copy it. That’s true but as a music creator I can tell you that you can rip audio from any digital source in just a few clicks, people will be able to copy your treasured Voiceverse.

Just to make things a bit more weird Voiceverse has lore.

On Ethyear 0, the Sun, which has supported and nurtured life on Earth for millennia, imploded and scorched the entirety of Milky Way with its fiery touches. Luckily, we had built colonies in other galaxies before our homeland was burnt to crisp.

Eons passed, and homo survivalis, or “Terrans”, as we had come to be known, had lost the ability to not only speak, but produce any form of nonverbal noise from our windpipe. Laughter was gone in our lives. We had to guess how frustrated or sad someone was from their facial expression only. This was all due to the fact that we had become overly reliant on vision, consuming only images, gifs, and texts.

Abundance of visual display, from personal electronics to embedded screens in our eyes, led us to mistakenly construe audio an inefficient way of conveying and gathering information, which ultimately led to our vocal cords deteriorating completely over centuries. The same fate occurred in all races of humans across different universes.

Then on Ethyear 8,888 a group of 100 ethereal beings by the name of Alpha Centum, or “Centums”, started appearing in various places.
They were omnipotent cosmic energies, spiritual beings that flowed from one galaxy to another beyond temporal or spatial limitations. They each possessed one authentic voice that demanded such respect and awe, as the world had long forgotten what “a real voice” was.

I feel this is the only response to that…

Troy isn’t the only video game star to partner with service. Charlet Takahashi Chung, the voice of D.Va in Overwatch and Starcraft II, is also a partner. She herself has not tweeted anything about the service which is probably the best.

The whole concept seems very odd, a NFT of a voice. It’s not like a voice is totally unique even in the real world, most people can do a good impression or two.

So far any attempt to include NFT‘s in to gaming have failed rather badly, will Voiceverse buck the trend?

UPDATE: Troy has woken up and seen the state of his Twitter and has responded to the comments.

I always want to be a part of the conversation, even if sometimes that finds me in the midst of a loud one. Appreciate y’all sharing your thoughts and giving me a lot to think about. I’m just a storyteller out here trying to tell my story to whomever will hear and hoping I can help others do the same. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m grateful there are those who are passionate about their stance & not only feel safe to express that but also have the means to do so.
The “hate/create” part might have been a bit antagonistic. Hope y’all will forgive me for that. Bad attempt to bring levity.
Anyway, feel free to resume the conversation, or not as you please. I appreciate those with truth showing it, those with support offering it, and those with anger doing their best to express with it.

Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2022/01/14/troy-baker-nft-voiceverse/

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