French Lara Croft actor starts lawsuit over alleged AI-generated voice lines in Aspyr's Tomb Raider remasters

Françoise Cadol, the long-time French voice actor for Lara Croft, has reportedly launched legal action against Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered publishers Aspyr over alleged use of generative AI to replicate her voice for lines in the game. Cadol claims Aspyr didn't contact her to ask for permission, and it appears the voice of Croft in at least one other dub of the remasters may have been put in a similar position.
According to a report from French publication Le Parisien, spotted by TheGamer, Cadol has issued a cease and desist to Aspyr over the matter.
We've reached out to Aspyr for comment.
It looks like the alleged AI-generated lines may have been added to the game by Patch 2 in mid-August. The notes for that patch include one that reads: "Restored missing or incorrect voiceover lines in various languages (especially Brazilian Portuguese)".
Cadol told Le Parisien she'd been alerted to the possible use of genAI to mimic her lines in the remaster by Tomb Raider fans, who've circulated what they believe to be examples of it happening on social media. Some of the lines supposedly using genAI in the remaster look to be tutorial instructions telling you how to do things like climb, with the comparison below featuring some different wording in the Remastered versions of some lines. The apparent genAI lines have a more robotic edge to them, in contrast to the natural inflections Cadol speaks with in the original.
🇫🇷 ALERTE INFO — Le patch des remasters de Tomb Raider IV, V et VI par @AspyrMedia vient de sortir…
Mauvaise surprise pour les fans français de Lara Croft, certaines répliques de Françoise Cadol dans le tutoriel ont été refaites avec l’IA et ça s’entend ! pic.twitter.com/YRbZsY669H
The French version isn't the only dub of the game to have allegedly done this. Lene Bastos, Croft's Brazilian Portuguese actor, has posted a video to Instagram stating that Tomb Raider fans have informed her that some of voice lines appear to have been subject to AI generation in the remasters. Bastos claims to have recieved a message from Aspyr about it, with the publishers putting the blame at the feet of an external development partner and telling her the lines will soon be removed in the game's next patch.
Voice actors fighting for protections against the possibility of companies using generative AI to mimic their voices was a key element of the SAG-AFTRA strike that concluded a few months ago. "Basically you have to get our consent to make a digital replica of us," Horizon and Borderlands voice actor Ashly Burch told the BBC when the strike was suspended. "You have to tell us how you're going to use it, and then you have to compensate us fairly."