The Witcher 3 Expansion Uses AI to Adjust Geralt's Polish Voice
CD Projekt Red has confirmed it used AI to alter some of the voice acting in Songs of the Past, the upcoming expansion for The Witcher 3. The goal was to make the Polish lines of Geralt, the series' central character, sound like the performance players heard in the base game about a decade ago.
The studio worked with Respeecher, an AI voice company, on the project. Geralt's longtime Polish voice actor is Jacek Rozenek. In 2019, Rozenek suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak.
He returned to voice acting in 2022. That meant hours of training every day, rebuilding the skills he needed to perform again. For Songs of the Past, he recorded all of the new lines himself. Those recordings were then sent to Respeecher, which adjusted them to match his base-game sound. Rozenek gave his consent for his voice lines to be edited this way.
The tools were trained on his earlier work. According to localisation producer Mikolaj Szwed, CD Projekt Red gave Respeecher every line Rozenek recorded for The Witcher 3 so that it could build a model of his voice.
This is not the first time the studio has used the company. CD Projekt Red previously worked with Respeecher on Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion. There, the company created new lines for the character Viktor Vektor after Polish actor Milogost Reczek died. Reczek's family gave their consent.
Songs of the Past is the second expansion for The Witcher 3, which first launched in 2015. Its new story content will sit alongside the base game's existing voice recordings, and the studio's aim is for the two to sound alike.
CD Projekt Red described the Respeecher work in an interview with Game File, as reported by VideoGamesChronicle. The studio has not announced a release date, so players will need to wait for it.
For players who know Geralt's voice well, the detail that stands out is who was involved. The actor recorded the new lines himself, and he agreed to how the technology was used. The studio's account is that the process was built around his performance, not in place of it.
