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Embark re-records Arc Raiders AI voice lines after fair criticism

Embark says criticism of AI voices in Arc Raiders was fair, calls full recording impractical, and has replaced some post-launch lines with human actors.

By Sasha Shader, Software & Security Reporter ·

Edited by Dot Matrix, Editor-in-Chief

An actor records new voice lines in a professional studio booth while an engineer monitors from the control room.
Human voices replace AI in Arc Raiders. Illustration generated by AI.

Embark Studios has re-recorded some AI-generated voice lines in Arc Raiders since launch, and its developers say there was “some really fair criticism” of the AI use that upset players.12

CEO Patrick Söderlund said the studio re-recorded some of those lines post-launch with real voices. He drew a hard line on the result: there is a quality difference, and a real professional actor is better than AI.23

Seen it before: the live build ships with the efficient take, the audience hears the seam, and the next patch quietly books the booth.

Most of the text-to-speech work covered audio less central to immersion, chiefly the in-match ping system. Embark says it pays actors for booth time, brings many of them back as the game updates, and for select uses pays to license their voices into that text-to-speech pipeline.23 The studio’s rationale was efficiency on a live extraction shooter that keeps adding lines, rather than recalling performers for every pass.3

Around launch, CCO Stefan Strandberg put the same tool in a narrower box: text-to-speech to widen scope on tedious or repetitive work, machine learning on some enemy locomotion when parts break, and no generative AI in the shipped experience. He argued new tech helped keep the team smaller while still growing features.4

Söderlund now casts AI first as a production tool. The team can try many line options internally before deciding what to record, which he frames as a way to work rather than a standing plan to replace actors. The studio does not, he said, necessarily believe in replacing humans with AI all the time.23

Developers have also said it was “too impractical to record” every voice line—the familiar live-ops math of frequent updates, many callouts, and finite booth hours.1 Arc Raiders drew strong player interest at launch and pushback on the synthetic voices, a fight Embark already knew from The Finals.34 The re-records leave the game with fewer AI voice lines than it shipped with.3

Our read: The fair-criticism line and the booth callbacks are one story: licensing did not settle what players heard, and human takes still win the A/B test on lines that matter. AI stays in the kit for tests and utility audio. What to watch is the next content drop—whether text-to-speech stays boxed to pings or creeps back when the update calendar tightens.

Footnotes

  1. PC Gamer, “‘There was some really fair criticism’: Arc Raiders’ devs understand why players were so upset about its AI use but say that it was ‘too impractical to record’ every voice line”. Retrieved November 2, 2026. ↩ ↩2

  2. Eurogamer, “Arc Raiders CEO says studio has “re-recorded” AI lines: “A real professional actor is better than AI; that’s just how it is”“. Retrieved November 2, 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. Polygon, “Arc Raiders dev Embark Studios re-recorded lines after AI voice controversy”. Retrieved November 2, 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  4. Eurogamer, ““There’s no shortcut to making great games” Embark Studios CCO responds to, and defends, AI use in Arc Raiders”. Retrieved November 2, 2026. ↩ ↩2

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