Arc Raiders swaps many AI voices for human recordings, CEO says

Arc Raiders was one of the biggest games of 2025 and remains hugely popular on Steam, but its use of AI-generated voice lines upset many players. Embark Studios CEO Patrick Söderlund says the team has replaced many text-to-speech lines with real human-recorded dialogue that is "better" than the AI slop featured at launch.

At launch, several in-game voice lines played when pinging a location were created using AI text-to-speech built from audio provided by actors who were paid a licensing fee. For some players, that was unacceptable and marred the release; the CEO of Nexon, the game’s publisher, had said all studios were using AI tools.

Söderlund said "a lot" of the in-game voice lines are now recorded by human actors and that there are fewer AI-generated lines than at launch. "We re-recorded some of the lines post-launch and made them with real voices," he told GamesIndustry.biz, adding that they don’t want to "replace" real performers.

arc raiders, embark studios, patrick söderlund, nexon, ai voices, text-to-speech, human recordings, voice lines, steam, actors