FISCHER: More machine than man now

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

It’s Star Wars month and there seems to be a big hubbub about a current “Fortnite” event that allows players to recruit a computer-controlled Darth Vader to their team.

Computer-controlled stand-ins for real players are nothing new in video games. Fighting games have always had single player modes with CPU opponents of varying difficulties. First-person shooters have long included options in their multiplayer modes to add computer-controlled players that don’t get mad about looking at their side of the screen.

Even in modern online multiplayer games where there should, theoretically, never be a shortage of players, there are still a place for computer-controlled players.

“Marvel Rivals,” for instance, has been not-so-sneaky about filling out team rosters with bots posing as real people, both as a way of keeping queue times low and as a way to give players on a losing streak a bit of an ego-boost by setting a team of real people up against a team of bots that are all but programmed to lose.

“Fortnite’s” AI-powered Darth Vader is a level beyond that, though. This isn’t a silent pre-programmed bot standing in for a human player going through the motions of gameplay.

This Vader is a fully-fledged character on his own that will join your team and act independently. He will fight alongside you, hang out with you, and, most notably, talk to you.

Though the power of AI, you can converse with the Sith lord as you would any other player and he will reply with an artificial replication of the late James Earl Jones’ distinctive voice.

And while on the surface it may seem like a silly amusement to be able to ask Darth Vader his thoughts on anything from how you’re playing in the game to what he thinks about the latest Taylor Swift song, it’s also another milestone for AI technology as it continues to blast its way into usage faster than norms can be developed around it.

Once upon a time, if a Star Wars project needed to have Darth Vader in a speaking role, they would have either needed to get James Earl Jones himself to do it or bring in a voice actor that could sufficiently mimic him.

Today though, in the wake of Earl’s death last September, those replacement voice actors now have to compete with a computer-generated facsimile of the man.

Yes, James Earl Jones did sign the rights to his voice over to Lucasfilm before his death, and his estate continues to consult and sign off on its use, easing up some of the morbidity about the situation. For all intents and purposes James Earl Jones has and will continue to be the voice of Darth Vader from now until end of time, and that was his intent.

But even in this case there’s still something unsettling about the jump from recreating his voice to speak pre-scripted dialogue, such as how it was used in the “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series, to turning that voice over to an AI that generates reactions on the spot. Two separate technologies coming together to make an even more believable re-creation.

So while it may be a novelty to be able to interact with an AI Darth Vader, are we prepared for the multitude of other applications this technology will eventually allow?

At the risk of crossing franchise lines, there were Star Trek holodeck episodes about this kind of thing and none of them ended well.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and is pleading with big tech to not dabble with AI Sherlock and Moriarty until we’ve got this whole thing on lockdown.