Embark CEO says ‘a real professional actor is better than AI’ after the studio re-records some Arc Raiders dialog with real humans

Arc Raiders has proven to be a big hit and showed that the extraction shooter had legs for a more casual crowd, but like The Finals before it, it’s drawn negative attention for its use of AI voices.

In a new interview, Embark CEO and Nexon executive chairman Patrick Söderlund told GamesIndustry.biz that the studio has begun to phase out “a lot” of the AI-generated voice work in Arc Raiders.

“We re-recorded some of the lines post-launch and made them with real voices … There is a quality difference,” Söderlund said. “A real professional actor is better than AI; that’s just how it is.”

Though Arc Raiders now has fewer AI voice lines than it did at release, the studio isn’t phasing out its use of AI. Söderlund reaffirmed a sentiment he’s shared before: that AI is enough of a timesaver to keep around.

“We look at [AI] first and foremost as a production tool,” he said. “We can test things internally. We can test 15 different lines without recording them, and then we know what to record. It’s also a way for us to work, not replace actors. We don’t necessarily believe in replacing humans with AI all the time.”

AI isn’t only concerning for creative reasons—its environmental and economic impacts contribute to a broad suite of ethical worries. While it seems like Söderlund appreciates that AI voice work can’t match the real thing, if you’ve been dodging Arc Raiders due to its use of the technology, these re-recordings don’t seem to signal a larger sea change at Embark.