Baldur’s Gate 3’s Astarion Actor Blasts AI Voice Acting as Soulless and Second-Rate

Neil Newbon — aka Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3 — is not mincing words about studios swapping human voice actors for generative AI. Short version: he hates it, thinks it sounds bad, and says it screws over working actors. Honestly, he is not wrong.

What Newbon is calling out

Speaking to PCGamesN, Newbon lays out a practice that has quietly crept into game production: a studio has a performer record a chunk of dialogue, then feeds that performance into AI to generate more lines later without bringing the actor back. That means more content using the actor's voice, fewer paid days for the human who created it, and a character that stops feeling, well, human.

'You are robbing that performer of that day's fee, and you are robbing that performer of the ability to look after themselves or their family — most actors, notoriously, are not rich.'

He also does not hold back on the quality issue. In his words, AI voiceover 'sounds crap' — boring, flat, and it yanks him out of the moment. Even when the tech gets close, he says there is a weird not-quite-right quality to it that lands squarely in uncanny valley territory. If you have ever heard an AI voice try to do panic or joy or pain, you know exactly what he means.

The specific problems he sees

• Studios record a bit of a performance, then use AI to stretch it into more lines later instead of hiring the actor again.
• That cuts actors out of workdays and paychecks in a field where most people are already scraping by.
• The results are 'boring' and 'dull as hell' — fine for temp audio, not for a final performance that is supposed to carry story and emotion.
• Even high-quality AI reads can feel off, especially in combat, danger, or big emotional beats. The immersion breaks.

Where studios are landing on this

Some major players are leaning into AI tools — the piece specifically calls out Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Krafton as examples of companies doubling down. On the other side, Larian Studios is taking the opposite approach: no generative AI for voice acting, period. That commitment is a big part of why Baldur's Gate 3 hit as hard as it did and walked away with Game of the Year in 2023 — those performances breathe life into the scripts.

Larian associate producer Burhan recently backed that up on social, arguing that handing 'unimportant lines' to AI (his words: that label is nonsense) robs up-and-coming actors of the early gigs that help them grow. He even name-checked Jennifer English — Shadowheart in BG3 and Maelle in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — noting that she went on to win Best Performance at this year's big awards for the latter. The point: if you replace the small parts with bots, you never discover the next standout.

My read

This is one of those industry details that sounds efficient on a spreadsheet and hollow in your ears. Games live or die on believable performances, and you can hear the difference when someone is actually in the booth finding the moment versus a model trying to approximate it. If you want your characters to feel alive, you need actors.

Where do you land on this? Real voices all the way, or are you fine with AI filling in the gaps?