CD Projekt Red uses AI to restore Polish Geralt actor's voice after his stroke

CD Projekt Red will use AI to help Jacek Rozenek, the Polish voice of Geralt of Rivia, return for Songs of the Past, the upcoming expansion to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Game Developer reports, citing Game File.

Rozenek's voice changed after a stroke. He returned to acting in the years since, but sounds gruffer and lower than in the thousands of lines he recorded as Geralt more than a decade ago, and the new lines will sit right next to those recordings. Rozenek is still being hired and paid to record the expansion. With his consent, the studio will use Respeecher, an AI voice company it previously worked with to use the voice of a late actor in Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion, to make the new recordings sound more like his earlier performance. The AI tools were trained on Rozenek's recordings from the earlier Witcher games.

"I do think this is one of those ways where you can use AI ethically, with consent and also to do something good," localization producer Mikołaj Szwed said. Szwed stressed that this is not a common occurrence and that the exception was made only because of Rozenek's health.