The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past: CD Projekt uses AI on Geralt's Polish voice, with actor Jacek Rozenek's consent after a stroke

Jacek Rozenek, who has voiced Geralt of Rivia in the Polish version of The Witcher series since the first game, recorded the new lines for Songs of the Past, The Witcher 3 expansion due in 2027. His recordings, however, were then modified with artificial intelligence by the company Respeecher, to bring them closer to the tone the actor had in the base game. CD Projekt Red revealed this to the Game File website.

In 2019 Rozenek suffered a stroke and for months could not speak. He returned to the role in 2021, for a quest in the next-gen update released in 2022, but told Game File he came out of that session "exhausted". For the expansion the studio chose not to change actors: Respeecher built a model of his voice from the lines recorded for The Witcher 3. The actor gave his consent. "The point is that this voice should be as close as possible to my voice from 12 years ago," he said, adding that he has great trust in the game's creators.

Mikołaj Szwed, localisation producer at CD Projekt, acknowledges that the use of AI is "a big concern" for those who work with voice actors, but argues this is "one of those ways where you can use AI ethically, with consent and also to do something good". For the studio it is a special case, linked to the actor's health. It is not the first time: in Phantom Liberty, the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, CD Projekt used Respeecher to recreate in Polish the voice of Miłogost Reczek, the Polish voice of Viktor Vektor, who died in 2021, with his family's consent.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is still widely played more than ten years after release: at 3:34 p.m. Italian time today it had 29,633 players online on Steam, according to Valve's public API.