Electronic Arts recently released a 'deep dive' video for Madden 25's Franchise Mode, with a voiceover courtesy of Mike Tirico, the play-by-play caster for NBC's Sunday Night Football. But, is it actually Tirico? A couple of Madden players have expressed their doubts about the trailer.
A thread posted on ResetEra posed the question, is EA using generative AI to simulate Mike Tirico's voice for the trailer? Now, there's always been some commentator manipulation in sports simulators, the classic 'cut and paste' method has long been used to accommodate the large amount of names present in the genre. It would be strange to use these methods for a trailer voiceover, though.
Players Aren't Convinced Tirico's Voice Isn't Generated
There are claims within the thread that Tirico's voice is entirely generated. "That's AI, 100%," reads one comment. "Unless they sliced this out word by word from multiple takes post-production, then yes it's absolutely AI," reads another.
If you listen to the trailer, there does seem to be some odd cadence from Tirico. "Player personality management and dynamic storylines," he blurts out with varying levels of volume. You can hear it at 23 seconds into the video where he says, "refresh-presentation elements," with refresh bleeding into the next word.
A couple of others aren't convinced, saying he could just be instructed to leave spaces after every word for future splicing. Either way, if EA were using generative AI, there isn't anything really unethical about using someone's voice if they've given explicit permission and have been compensated.
Of course, you're also compromising on quality in a lot of cases as AI voiceovers often sound unnatural, as they can't quite mimic the imperfections of human speech accurately yet.
Madden 25 releases August 13 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
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