Getting permissions to use existing voice over for voice cloning and new dialogues

General Discussion
1

I currently am involved in some plans to build some sort of expanded universe where existing characters like Jaina and Kael might be involved in excitingly new scenes/dialogues/conversations that the original developers did not intend, and the likes.

Because such projects obviously don’t have the money to hire the very capable and expensive original voice actors, my personal mission is to use this opportunity to investigate the feasibility of using cutting-edge voice cloning technologies to create naturalistic, new voice lines for the new dialogues that are written. I will eventually report the results of this investigation to the project stakeholders to help deciding whether this is a feasible solution for the project.

Some of the applications I will consider and use are:

  1. Corentin Jemine’s Real-Time-Voice-Cloning solution:
  • Source codes:
    https://github.com/CorentinJ/Real-Time-Voice-Cloning

  1. The Respeecher solution made by this fine company from Urkraine:
    https://www.respeecher.com/

  2. Resemble AI
    https://www.resemble.ai/

As you know, these voice files can be easily extracted using Blizzard’s own World Editor. They can be obtained one by one using the Sound Editor module in the World Editor.

Because the World Editor’s EULA has not mentioned what is or is not reasonable use when it comes to voice files, I’d like to have permission from Blizzard that allows me to clone these voices, so that I can produce new voice dialogues for ethical and purely entertainment purposes.

Is there some way to get such a permission? Does anyone know how or who I should contact?

Thanks in advance.

2 Likes
2

I have been looking for something like this. Would be great for content with story i.e. custom campaigns…

3

you cant, its a black box. and these forums are the worst place to start searching for blizz attention anyway. spamming reddit or twitter has been more successful in the past, but i doubt theres anyone left reading those messages today.

according to the new eula they own everything you make anyway, so theres that. if you really wanna waste the time in this abandoned game, you should probably just go for it and wait for a possible response. chances are, even if they would theoretically be against it, they probably dont care enough. in the worst case you get a notice to terminate the project.

2 Likes
4

I would just do and not wait for it. As far as I understand, voices belong to individuals, not a company.

5

If you can get this working, we could even get community reforgings of the campaigns with extra voice lines for the main characters as well. Finally, Arthas can say something more meaningful than “now, Frostmourne” when he makes the Silver moon ice bridge, for example…