Troy Baker on AI and using others' work: "You'll find a little bit of Nolan North in me"

When you sit and chat with artists these days, it's hard not to bring up the huge grey cloud looming over their heads that is AI. Dread it, run from it, the people spending billions on it have to see the tech go somewhere, and for an actor like Troy Baker and composer like Austin Wintory, it seems their work is under threat. However, speaking with the pair at Comicon Napoli, we found some interest, as well as plenty of understandable hesitance around the technology.

"I don't think you could ever discount the ingenuity and resiliency of an artist trying to find a way to make money at what they do," said Baker, explaining that people will find a way to bring their creativity to life no matter what. "There's a quote by David Milch where he said, 'the exegesis of the artist situation are always of the financial.' It's always trying to find a way to subsidize our addiction of doing what we do. And if we have to sell our soul, as Harrison Ford put it, or find very unique ways to make money so we can continue to do this, sure, I think that shows the agency and the authority that an artist has over their work."

"But I can also see how someone can just easily, quickly bastardize that. If you look at what I do, I've stolen from everybody that I've ever respected. In some ways, there's a fingerprint of what they've done on me. I mean, you'll find a little bit of Nolan North in me," Baker continued. "It's like, does the Beatles need the Stones? The Stones need the Beatles. Everybody traces themselves back to the same lineage. We're all thieves. And I think that if we regard ourselves as anything but, we're fooling ourselves."

Wintory added that he'd stolen in his career, too, but that there are multiple ways in which technology can affect the arts. There are people who will never use Photoshop, and those that make a living entirely from it, for example, and he sees AI quite similarly with how it offers a new tool."I refuse to be pessimistic about it. Now, I don't know the implications. I don't want to be naive either. But I also look at it and I go, hey, if it comes and it takes my job, the universe doesn't owe me my job. I hope I can do this until my dying days like Jerry Goldsmith. But I can't guarantee that and I certainly can't force reality to promise me that. And so I'm not going to try."

Check out our full interview below for the latest from Wintory and Baker: