Tomb Raider IV-VI: Lara's French Voice Actress Against Aspyr's AI

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered, released last February, was developed by Aspyr Media, a team currently part of the software house package under the umbrella of the multinational Embracer Group.

The game received a patch last August which, among other things, announced tweaks to volume levels and improved restoration of the in-game voiceovers: apparently it seemed like a routine corrective, but in hindsight it was discovered that to create this patch the developers decided to take a not-so-legitimate shortcut.

The discrepancy was reported by Françoise Cadol, the voice actress who lent her voice to the protagonist Lara Croft in the French version of the collection: according to Le Parisien, the actress has indeed sued Aspyr - and thus Embracer - for altering her performances using Artificial Intelligence software.

In fact, if you listen to Lara's voice in the new version of the dubbing, even without being fluent in the language from across the Alps, you realize how some phrases, the unaltered ones, enjoy a certain pathos and interpretation, while others, the retouched ones, are flat and robotic, a typical result of AI work. According to some fans, the AI's intervention would not be limited to audio retouching but would also have been used to create new loading screens, such as the one we report:

Beyond some reasonable suspicion, we don't know where this lawsuit will lead: Françoise Cadol is a personality very committed to the fight against the illicit use of artists' work through AI and is a member of the French movement Touch pas à ma VF.

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch: our Review is at your disposal to learn more.