UPDATE: A huge thank you to the voice acting community, its performers, and to the good folks at NAVA for their amazing support and guidance. It has been truly humbling to be able to communicate directly with affected performers and take legal action against this foul practice. With action now underway, it is time to remove the list.
Thank you to everyone who got involved and made your voices heard. It has truly made a difference.
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The following list contains names and links of various mods generated by the Skyrim mod community that use AI voice cloning technology (powered mostly by ElevenLabs) to copy the voices of performers in the game and create believable deepfake clips of those performers reciting explicit dialogue.
If you are a performer, ctrl + f and search your name.
The Nexus Mods links are only accessible if you have an active account with Nexus Mods because they are tagged as NSFW (LoversLab links should be accessible without an account). Due to the implementation of Nexus Mods’ search tools, it is very challenging for people outside of our community to monitor the site for offending content. The links lead you to the download pages for the mods, which contain screenshots, and (in most cases) videos of the mods in question.
These fake clips can only be created by extracting dialogue from their respective games and uploading those clips to the ElevenLabs voice cloning service (or other AI-driven cloning tools such as xVASynth). ElevenLabs is currently most popular due to its speed, ease of use, and realistic results. It should be noted that even ElevenLabs reminds users every step of the way that the service is only to be used with clips that they personally own or have the rights to.
NOTE: Some of the videos on the mod pages are outdated, showing more primitive voice-cloned results before Eleven Labs was made available to the public. The newest versions of this content all feature lifelike voice recreation using Eleven Labs. This content was created without permission, essentially creating deepfake pornographic content without consent.
Secondly, please note that this list largely contains only mods that use AI-cloned voicing to create pornographic content, and is not exhaustive. There are already hundreds of mods that use AI voice cloning without the permissions of the original performers to create non-pornographic content. The only way to keep tabs on it is to monitor the “AI-Generated Content” tag: https://www.nexusmods.com/mods/?tags_yes[]=4488
Though this is not the primary focus of this document, here are some random examples of mods that use AI voice cloning to make mods that are not pornographic in nature. These are here to provide a more broad overview into how the community uses AI voice cloning for the generation of third-party content.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/89198 - clones the voices of Neil Dickson, Noah Nelson, Renee Victor, Tim Blaney, Diane Louise Salinger, Jason Marsden.
https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/52772 - clones the voices of Jonathan Bryce, Wes Johnson, Catherine Flye, Craig Sechler, Elisabeth Noone, and Linda Kenyon. Note that this one is for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/67896 - clones Laura Bailey, Corri English, and Kari Wahlgren.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/59341 - clones the voice of Laura Bailey.
^Mods like this are popping up every single day. The only way for a performer to know if they have been affected is to monitor the AI-generated tag and look at the examples given by the mod author.
Even that is not foolproof. Mod authors creating this work often block this tag, meaning that their mods do not appear in the search.They can also simply not upload any samples to the mod page, placing the onus on the performers to keep a copy of any given game installed on their computers, and to manually install mods one at a time to check to see if their voice has been cloned:
The “AI-Generated Content” tag is blocked, meaning that users cannot tag it
correctly, nor will it turn up by searching for the tag.
There are ways to use AI voice generation, and even voice cloning, that are ethical. Mod authors can clone the voices of consenting participants, or use their own voices to train the model. There is also generative tech that allows users to create completely original voices rather than cloning someone in the first place. Consent, credit, and compensation are essential when using this type of tool in an ethical way. Unfortunately, it is more common in our community to clone the voices of in-game performers without their knowledge or consent.
The mods below are all pornographic in nature, and contain AI-cloned voice clips:
Myself and others have reported mods like these to the website that is hosting the content, Nexus Mods (which can be reached here - https://www.nexusmods.com/) to no avail. You can contact them directly using the email address here if you wish to take action: support@nexusmods.com
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Nexus Mods has officially confirmed that they will remove AI-cloned voice modifications if the original performers, their agents/managers, or rights holders for the original content reach out.
I am very happy to share that affected voice performers who have reached out to Nexus Mods have successfully been able to have the content removed.
Their full contact information is viewable here: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?app=nexus&module=support§ion=new
If you are a performer who has been affected by this practice, I encourage you to take action and demand that Nexus Mods or LoversLab remove any non-consensual pornographic content featuring a cloned version of your voice (or any cloned voice period). I would also suggest contacting Bethesda/Zenimax directly to express your concern. It is my hope that if enough performers do so, Nexus Mods, LoversLab, and all third-party mod platforms will have no choice but to ban the practice outright.
If you are a Bethesda employee and you are reading this message, I remind you of your responsibility to protect your voice actors, and urge you to take action and demand that third-party mod hosts (such as Nexus Mods, ModDB, and LoversLab) put an end to this practice on their respective platforms. As a long-standing member of your modding community, I believe you owe it to your company and our community to make clear to every mod distribution platform that the creation distribution of non-consensual deepfake pornography in the form of game mods is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. We are at our best when we create a welcoming and inclusive community that inspires creativity and expression; we are at our worst when we create content that is harmful and abusive.
If you are a member of our community who is engaging in the creation or consumption of mods using AI-cloned voices without the consent of the original performers (especially but not exclusively if that content is pornographic in nature), I ask that you consider that the performers whose likenesses you are using without consent are real people, not just names in a credits list. There are ethical uses of AI voice tools, but they all involve consenting participants. There is irrefutable evidence and first-hand testimony that performers do not consent to their voices being abused in this way. These performers help bring the game worlds we love to life, and we should repay them with kindness and respect, not a flagrant disregard for their wishes in favor of our own amusement.
If you want to help put an end to this practice, the best thing you can do is to help spread the word. Contact affected voice actors, reach out to them on Twitter or other front-facing social media, and make them aware of this situation. Without the knowledge that this is happening, they are powerless to act to put an end to it. By informing voice actors who have been targeted, you give them the opportunity to protect themselves. You can also write to Bethesda at info@bethsoft.com to express your concern. In time, it is my hope that Bethesda will officially condemn this practice and ban its distribution.
Consent matters.
-Robbie