League of Legends trailer mispronounces long-running character name, prompting misplaced confusion around AI voice acting

Nov. 24, 2023

“No direction” and some heavy editing by Riot caused fans to think the voiceover in the new Sivir trailer was AI

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The name of a long-running League of Legends character has been mispronounced in a new trailer, prompting some misplaced confusion around AI voice acting.

The trailer, posted on theLeague of Legends: Wild Rift Twitter account, showcases Sivir, a battle mistress who can quickly cut groups of enemies down to size with her bladed boomerang, create magical barriers to block enemy attacks, and provide a boost to allies movement speed. All in all, she’s a helpful lady to have on the battlefield, though her impressive abilities have been overshadowed by the fact her name isn’t pronounced properly in the latest trailer.

Sivir’s been around since the game’s original launch in 2009, but instead of pronouncing it asSiv-ear, like it’s supposed to be, she’s instead referred to as Severe. This led to speculation that Riot had used AI to introduce the character to the series' mobile offering, and fans were less than impressed. In the comments, they urged the developer to stop using AI and keep to the traditional method of hiring real people for the job. “There are actual humans who do voiceover for a living. Hire them,” one League of Legends fan wrote.

As it turns out, it wasn’t AI at all. In reality, it was a very real voice actor who was given no guidance from Riot. According to prominent LoL commentator @MedicCasts, “the voice actor tweeted (and has since deleted) saying their voice was heavily edited and they were given no direction”.

League of Legends fans have since come out in support of the voice actor and are rather baffled by the whole situation. “Hiring a voice actor and giving them no direction is a pretty poor move”, said one LoL player. “Well, this boggles how Riot managed to edit the voice so heavily that every intonation sounds the same/similar to AI,” wrote another.

While it wasn’t AI on this occasion, with the use of the technology on the rise, we could very well see AI-generated voices adopted more and more in games. Recently, several voice actors from prominent games such asStar Wars Jedi: SurvivorandStarfieldhit out at Microsoft for its latest AI efforts, which are capable of generating character dialogue. Additionally, thenew Naruto fighting game has received backlash over a questionable redubthat some suspect is the result of AI manipulation.

According to legendary creatorHideo Kojima, “humans should be above”" AI.

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