Aloy’s actress Ashly Burch is “worried” about the AI Aloy leak from Sony.
On 11 March, 2025, footage from an internal presentation at Sony was leaked, revealing that the company had been working on an AI chatbot-like version of Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West. In the footage, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s director of software engineering, Sharwin Raghoebardajal, engaged with the AI version of Aloy and asked her simple questions, which the AI responded to while staying in character.
On 15 March, 2025, actress Ashly Burch – who plays Aloy in the Horizon franchise – posted a video statement on the leaked AI footage, emphasising that she was told that her performance was not used to create the AI model. She also reflected that she was “worried about this art form.”
Aloy actress responds to AI Aloy footage from Sony
Video game actress Ashly Burch has released a video responding to the recent leak of AI Aloy footage. The footage was captured internally at Sony, and saw an executive asking an AI-powered model of Aloy a series of questions. The chatbot-like Aloy model would respond in real time, powered by various AI software like OpenAI’s Whisper for speech-to-text and Mockingbird for facial animation.
However, the voice used was notably not a synthesised version of Ashly Burch’s performance in the Horizon games – even if the performance was likely based on her motion-capture work in Horizon Forbidden West, as the model was lifted straight from that game.
In a video, Burch noted that she had watched the tech demo last week, and that Horizon developer Guerrilla Games had informed her that the “demo didn't reflect anything that was actively in development.” This likely means that it was a simple tech demo, and not a precursor to a larger AI Aloy-headed project at Sony. She was also assured that none of her performance was used to make the AI model. “So none of my facial or voice data,” she said, although “Guerrilla owns Aloy as a character."
Burch admitted that despite these assurances, she felt “worried.” She continued: “Not worried about Guerrilla specifically, or Horizon, or my performance, or my career specifically, even. I feel worried about this art form. Game performance as an art form."
Burch went on to note that situations like this are precisely why the ongoing SAG-AFTRA game performer’s strikes are still ongoing. “We're asking for protections. What we are fighting for is, you have to get our consent before you make an AI version of us in any form. You have to compensate us fairly and you have to tell us how you're using this AI double."
The actress said: “I just imagine a video like this coming out that does have someone's performance attached to it. That does have someone's voice, or face, or movement. And the possibility that if we lose this fight, that person would have no recourse," the actress said. "They wouldn't have any protections. Any way to fight back. And that possibility... it makes me so sad. It hurts my heart. It scares me.”
She signed off by saying that “Fighting is what we have to do to protect the future and longevity of this career we all love so much,” in support of the strike. Last week, it was announced that the SAG-AFTRA video game strike would continue, as video game companies and the union were still divided over AI use.
