Patrick Söderlund, the head of Arc Raiders studio Embark, has once again defended how the studio uses AI and revealed that the game now has fewer AI lines after the team re-recorded some parts.
Like Embark’s previous game, The Finals, Arc Raiders uses an AI-powered text-to-speech system. A lot of people took issue with this, and Söderlund has now clarified how Embark pays the actors and revealed that Arc Raiders has removed AI voice lines since launch.
“We pay our actors for all time spent with us in the booth and continue to bring many of them back as we carry on updating the game,” the developer told GI.biz. “For select usage, we also pay them for the approval to license their voices through text-to-speech for lines that aren’t as essential to the immersion of the experience, mostly ping system audio.”
Söderlund went on to say that there are now fewer AI voices lines in Arc Raiders than when the game launched in October 2025.
“We re-recorded some of the lines post-launch and made them with real voices,” he explained. “There is a quality difference. A real professional actor is better than AI; that’s just how it is.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 voice actor Neil Newbon previously called upon Embark to bring the Arc Raiders actors back to the studio to re-record lines, and that seems to be what the studio ended up doing.
So why use AI at all? Söderlund said Embark uses AI “first and foremost as a production tool” to help with testing things internally before fleshing things out.
“We can test 15 different lines without recording them, and then we know what to record. It’s also a way for us to work, not replace actors. We don’t necessarily believe in replacing humans with AI all the time,” he said.
Embark has on multiple occasions already defended its choice to use AI systems in Arc Raiders, stating that “making games without actors isn’t an end goal” and a combination of recorded voice audio and audio generated via text-to-speech tools merely expedited the process.
“People have to take a step back and understand what it is and how it can be a big help to developers and be a tremendous benefit to players. I realize it is an intricate subject and discussion,” Söderlund said previously.
