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PC Gamer
PC Gamer
Ted Litchfield

French Lara Croft actor issues C&D to Tomb Raider Remaster studio as multiple foreign dubs of the game are accused of adding AI voiceovers

Tomb Raider Remastered's Lara.

As reported by TheGamer and Le Parisien, the former French voice of Lara Croft, Françoise Cadol, has reportedly issued a cease and desist to Aspyr over what seem to be AI-generated voice lines imitating her in the remasters of Tomb Raiders 4, 5, and 6.

Lara Croft's Brazilian Portuguese actor for this portion of the series, Lene Bastos, has also spoken out about her performance being modified in this way, and other localizations may have also been affected according to TheGamer and French Tomb Raider fan account, Tomb Raider Files.

Aspyr seems to already be on the case fixing this, but the studio has not publicly commented on the matter. I have reached out to Aspyr for clarification, and will update this story when I hear back.

The changes appear to have been made as part of an August 18 patch to Aspyr's remaster of The Last Revelation, Chronicles, and Angel of Darkness, a follow-up to its well-received remaster of the first three Tomb Raider games from 2024. Tomb Raider Files has a side-by-side comparison of some original lines and their replacements from the French dub, uploaded when the patch first released.

Speaking to Le Parisien, Cabol said she was not contacted by Aspyr about any changes to the recording, and that she did not re-record lines for the game. Cabol was alerted to the changes by French Tomb Raider fans. Lene Bastos first addressed the issue in a video on Instagram uploaded August 21.

"I was also upset with the new information that some of my lines in this game were restored using AI," Bastos said (she provided her own English subtitles in the video). "I am not against AI in any way, but we urgently need regulation on this tool because it can affect and harm all kinds of work and jobs."

In a follow-up video on September 4, Bastos said she received a message from Aspyr apologizing for the re-recording and claiming that the adjustments were made by an "external development partner," with the offending lines set to be removed in the next few weeks.

Brazilian Tomb Raider fan account, Tomb Raider de A a Z, uploaded a screenshot of the message as shared by Bastos. Notably, the message explicitly states that the voice lines were AI-generated by this external partner.

Given the lower-quality, robotic-sounding AI-generated lines, it's confusing why they would be added in the first place. At least some of the offending lines, as shared by Tomb Raider Files, come from the games' tutorials, with different wording between the old and new recordings. It's possible this was, in part, a quick and dirty way to update tutorial messages to account for different control schemes.

For an example of this issue being handled better, Nightdive studios hired actors to record new voice lines in the tutorial/prologue section of the System Shock 2 remaster in order to account for the game's newly-added controller support.

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