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A lifelong fan of Tomb Raider, French gamer Romain Bos was on tenterhooks when an update of the popular video game went online in August. But his excitement quickly turned to anger. The gamer’s ears and those of other Tomb Raider” fans picked up something amiss with the French-language voice of Lara Croft, the games protagonist. It sounded robotic, lifeless even shorn of the warmth, grace, and believability that French voice actor Françoise Cadol has given to Croft since she started playing the character in 1996. Gamers and Cadol herself came to the same conclusion: A machine had cloned her voice and replaced her. It’s pathetic,” says Cadol, who straight away called her lawyer. My voice belongs to me. You have no right to do that. It was absolutely scandalous, says Bos. It was artificial intelligence. AI encroaching everywhere Aspyr, the game developer based in Austin, Texas, didnt respond to e-mailed questions from The Associated Press. But it acknowledged in a post last week on its website that what it described as unauthorized AI generated content had been incorporated into its Aug. 14 update of Tomb Raider IVVI Remastered” that angered fans. Weve addressed this issue by removing all AI voiceover content, Aspyr’s post said. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Still, the affair has triggered alarms in the voiceover community, with campaigners saying it’s a sobering example of the dangers that AI poses to human workers and their jobs. If we can replace actors, well be able to replace accountants, and a whole range of other professions that could also be automated,” says Patrick Kuban, a French-language voice actor who is also a co-president of United Voice Artists, an international federation of voiceover artists. “So we need to ask ourselves the right questions: How far should we go, and how do we regulate these machines?” Hollywood has seen similar concerns, with video game performers striking for 11 months for a new contract this year that included AI guardrails. This is happening pretty much everywhere. Were getting alerts from all over the world from Brazil to Taiwan, Kuban said in an Associated Press interview. Actors voices are being captured, either to create voice clones not perfect ones but for illicit use on social media by individuals, since there are now many apps for making audio deepfakes,” Kuban said. These voices are also being used by content producers who arent necessarily in the same country,” he said. So its very difficult for actors to reclaim control over their voices, to block these uses. Cadol’s Voice Guardians Cadol says that within minutes of the release of the Tomb Raider update, her phone began erupting with messages, emails and social media notifications from upset fans. I took a look and I saw all this emotion anger, sadness, confusion. And that’s how I found out that my voice had been cloned, she said in an AP interview. Cadol says 12 years of recording French-language voiceovers for Lara Croft from 1996 to 2008 built an intimate bond with her fans. She calls them the guardians of her work. Once the initial shock subsided, she resolved to fight back. Her Paris lawyer, Jonathan Elkaim, is seeking an apology from Aspyr and financial redress. Grammar error In the update, new chunks of voiceover appear to have been added to genuine recordings that Cadol says she made years ago. Most notably, fans picked up on one particularly awkward segment. In it, a voice instructs players how to use their game controllers to make Lara Croft climb onto an obstacle, intoning in French: Place toi devant et appuyez sur avancer Stand in front and press advance.’ Not only does it sound clunky but it also rings as grammatically incorrect to French speakers mixing up the polite and less polite forms of language that they use, depending on who they’re addressing. Gamers were up in arms. Bos posted a video on his YouTube channel that same evening, lamenting: “Its half Françoise Cadol, half AI. Its horrible ! Why have they done that? I was really disgusted, the 34-year-old said in an AP interview. I grew up with Françoise Cadol’s voice. I’ve been a Tomb Raider fan since I was young kid.” Lara Croft is a bit how should I say a bit sarcastic at times in some of her lines. And I think Françoise played that very, very well, he said. Thats exactly why now is the time to set boundaries,” he added. Its so that future generations also have the chance to experience talented actors.” John Leicester and Nicolas Garriga, Associated Press
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Historically, one of the best ways to generate interest in what someone has to say is to not allow them to say it. Trump and his handpicked chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) may not have set out to create a built-in, eager audience for Jimmy Kimmel content when they allegedly pressured ABC to yank his show off the air last week, but thats just what they did. Kimmel knew hed be speaking to far more viewers than usual during last nights comeback episode, and he did not squander the opportunity. Instead, he delivered a bold yet measured once-in-a-lifetime monologue that reached across the aisle while punching up at those in power. At one point during his remarkable monologue, the host directly commented on the size of his new audience. He played a clip of Trump gloating over ABCs decision to pull him off the air, claiming Kimmel would be easy to replace because he had no ratings. Well, tonight I do, Kimmel retorted. Indeed, he did. Although the linear TV ratings are not in yetand will likely be skewed by the fact that local broadcasting companies Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair refused to carry the show in several major markets, including Washington, D.C.the YouTube clip for Kimmels opening monologue earned seven million views in a matter of hours and was up to 10 million as of this writing. He tried his best to cancel meinstead, he forced millions of people to watch the show, Kimmel continued. He might have to release the Epstein files to distract from this. Kimmel and his writers understood the assignment More important than the size of the audience for last nights episode was its breadth. Kimmel and his writers understood that this first monologue back from the brink of cancellation would reel in not only the usual fans and a huge batch of lapsed supporters, but also a hate-watching MAGA contingent, and curious viewers of all ideological stripes. Everyone wanted to know: Would it be a chastened Kimmel playing nice? An undeterred Kimmel talking righteous trash? Would he feature a star-studded circle of supporters like Stephen Colbert recently did in his first show after CBS announced his cancellation? Much like the general state of affairs in 2025, no outcome seemed off the table. What viewers might not have expected, though, is what they ended up getting: a deeply nuanced and heartfelt plea for unity, beneath the more-expected surface layer of scathing, hilarious jokes at this administrations expense. The ostensible reason that FCC chair Brendan Carr appeared to urge broadcasters to dump Kimmel last week was a single sentence the host uttered, which many interpreted as suggesting that Charlie Kirks murderer was aligned with MAGA. Kimmel had reportedly meant to address this misconception last week, before his show was pulled. Last night, he finally did. It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man, he said, tearing up. I don’t think there’s anything funny about it . . . Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what was obviously a deeply disturbed individual. That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make. But I understand that, to some, it felt either ill-timed or unclear or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger. I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way. Kimmel may not have apologized for his previous words, but he did something rarer and arguably more powerful: He validated the people genuinely outraged by them. He cut right through the film of polarization that envelops every current event but especially those in the weeks since Kirks murder, and emphasized both sides shared humanity. No wonder he teared up again nearly 10 minutes later, while recalling Erika Kirks magnanimous forgiveness of her husbands killer during Kirks memorial service over the weekend. Speaking truth to powerwith a smile Though surrounded by savage clowning on Carr and Trump, Kimmels comments about Kirk were so considered and seemingly genuine, they made the campaign to silence him look even more cynical and malicious in contrast. Even if Kimmel were only pretending to be so affected by the murder of a young father with whom he vehemently disagreed, well, at least hes incredible at pretending. Trump, meanwhile, gives away the game every time he speaks about Kimmels suspension. Around the time the show aired last night, the president sent out a furious Truth Social post, threatening to test ABC on whether keeping Kimmel on the air amounts to a major illegal Campaign Contribution to Democrats. He seemingly forgot to mention that the push to get rid of Kimmel, which he hinted at as far back as July, was supposed to be on behalf of Charlie Kirk. Some of the most scathing material in Kimmels monologue was about the apparent efforts to use Kirks murder as a means to censor dissenting voicesbe they journalists, professors, or talk show hostsand the host deftly manages to flip those efforts into a further call for unity. The government push to remove a comedian from television seemed to be so blatant, after all, that it attracted support from unlikely allies such as Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Candace Owens. Kimmel wisely paints his suspension with patriotism, calling the effort anti-American, and grounds it in the lineage of previously censored comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin. Maybe the silver lining from this is we found one thing we can agree on and maybe we’ll even find another one, he says near the end of his monologue. Maybe we can get a little bit closer together. We do agree on a lot of things. We agree on keeping our children safe from guns, on reproductive rights for women, social security, affordable health care, pediatric cancer research. These are all things that most Americans support. Let’s stop letting these politicians tell us what they want and tell them what we want. Though not every vew Kimmel nodded toward is shared by all Americans, his plea for finding common ground capped off an incisive, inclusive monologue that will likely earn him grudging kudos from people who disagree with him. After the monologue, Kimmel switched gears and went back to doing what he normally does: flexing his First Amendment-protected freedom to make fun of some other things the president recently did.
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AI is not ready to hang up its Cupids arrow just yet. Facebook Dating is the latest dating app to present AI-based features as the answer to swipe fatigue, Meta announced yesterday. The new features include a dating assistant AI chatbot that allows users to find compatible matches, as well as a Meet Cute feature that automatically pairs them with an algorithmically matched profile once a week, all without users having to swipe a finger. Rather than searching through endless profiles, users can type out exactly what they are looking for in a romantic partner and the assistant will recommend compatible matches. The assistant allows users to go beyond traditional traits like height or education, a Meta spokesperson told Fast Company. For example, if a user typed out the prompt: find me a finance bro who loves puppies and long walks on the beach, in theory, the assistant would pull up a match based on publicly available information drawn from their profile. The AI assistant can also be prompted for dating advice, including effective pickup lines or romantic first date ideas, and will be available in the Matches tab, continuing to roll out gradually across the U.S. and Canada, Meta says. According to a recent study, just over a quarter of singles are already using AI wingmen to enhance their dating lives, up 333% from 2024. Facebook Datings move away from the traditional dating app model lands amid a time of swipe fatigue and dating app burnout. In 2024, 78% of dating app users reportedly feel emotionally, mentally, or physically exhausted from the apps, according to one Forbes Health survey. Many are instead turning to curated and vetted services and personalized matchmakers. While Facebook Dating may not be the first dating app that comes to mind, it has answered the call. Facebook said that matches among young adults are up 10% year over year, and that hundreds of thousands of young adults in the U.S. and Canada create accounts each month. Compared to competitors like Tinder, which has about 50 million daily active users, and Hinges 10 million daily active users, it’s a drop in the bucket. But as the influx of singles run clubs and resurgence of speed-dating has shown, hopeless romantics will try anything once.
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