Horizon Zero Dawn developer replacing all actors with robots "not going to happen", says Aloy voice actress

Ashly Burch has played numerous video game characters, one of her most famous being Aloy in Guerrilla’s Horizon series. Earlier this year, footage leaked showing a Sony employee engaging with an on-screen AI version of the Horizon lead. The employee asked the AI Aloy a number of questions, such as “how are you”, to which the character replied she was ok, before she shared some Horizon lore.

The whole thing raised a few eyebrows, especially considering Aloy is a character growing up in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by rogue AI-controlled machines.

Burch herself released a video following this leak, stating developer Guerrilla had been in contact with her to say the “demo didn’t reflect anything that was actively in development”. She additionally added Sony “didn’t use any of [Burch’s] performance” for the demo. But, how would she feel if AI used in the next Horizon game?

“For me, I think that AI as a tool to make things easier on devs would be a great thing. Like, I think I’ve heard someone say before something like, ‘oh, if we used artificial intelligence to help with clean up between the mo-cap stage and importing it into the actual game engine, that could be amazing’. So, things that help streamline the development process [and] help make people’s jobs easier, I think is great,” Burch told Eurogamer.