These new "accents"

[YukiSuter]

I'm genuinely curious who at FSDT thought that getting someone with an american accent to voice the "japanese" accent by simply replacing Ls with Rs was a good idea?
The "accent" that FSDT just published for GSX genuinely feels like a casually racist parody.
If anyone wants to see for themselves and owns GSX pro, go to "Addon Manager\couatl\GSX\sounds\en-jp" and look for yourself.

It even gets to the rediculous point of "welcome" apparently being replaced with "wercome". Which isnt even how the Ls to Rs part of Japanese speaking works. There was clearly no thought put into it and not even the slightest google search. A youtube search on "Japanese people speaking english" and a 2 min listen to a video would've indicated just how wrong these sounds are.

[virtuali]

All new crew voices are AI-generated, using voice cloning from people of various accents speaking English.

[YukiSuter]

My apologies, perhaps I should've made myself clearer. I am talking about the cabin crew voices. I actually quite like the ground crew voices you've done such as the pushback ones, so I commend you and the team for those.

It is evident however that the en-jp cabin crew ones were clearly either done in a different way or with error. The cabin crew voices for other accents appear to actually be completely fine and actually in the accent of the country.

Though I do think your response of

All new crew voices are AI-generated, using voice cloning from people of various accents speaking English.

is very irresponsible and demonstrates exactly why due diligence is required when using AI on things like this. The phrase "well AI was used" is not a satisfactory answer to why a racist stereotypical voice was added to the program.

[virtuali]

My apologies, perhaps I should've made myself clearer. I am talking about the cabin crew voices.

That's exactly what I was referring to.

I actually quite like the ground crew voices you've done such as the pushback ones, so I commend you and the team for those.

That's AI as well.

The phrase "well AI was used" is not a satisfactory answer to why a racist stereotypical voice was added to the program.

We don't have much control how voice cloning works, and neither have much ability to know how "offensive" it sounds.

[YukiSuter]

The phrase "well AI was used" is not a satisfactory answer to why a racist stereotypical voice was added to the program.

We don't have much control how voice cloning works, and neither have much ability to know how "offensive" it sounds.

Right, so you dont have control over how it works, fine. You do however have the ability to know how offensive it sounds. It is very clearly an american accent so even if it didnt use racist stereotypes it is still wrong, and in a very obvious way.

You're saying your team used AI without knowing whether the accents were accurate? For context I did not need to tell my non-asian mates (who I got to sanity check myself) for them to realise that it was offensive.

Here is reddit post on r/MicrosoftFlightSim with everyone agreeing. If you want to go ahead and say everyone on here can only tell its offensive because they are Japanese go for it, but that would be one hell of an assumption.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFlightSim/comments/1dc2bsb/the_new_gsx_boarding_sounds_come_with_a_variety/

[virtuali]

You do however have the ability to know how offensive it sounds.

That's precisely what I said I don't:

"neither have much ability to know how "offensive" it sounds"

Which means, I wouldn't even know how to fix it, and when it stops being "offensive".

It is very clearly an american accent so even if it didnt use racist stereotypes it is still wrong, and in a very obvious way.

Very obvious to you maybe, as native speaker, and it doesn't sound very american at all to me (and I guess to most americans), considering the voice is cloned from a japanese person speaking english.

I'll make an example, please don't take it again as a "racist" example, and try not to abuse of that world, which seems to be a catch-all buzzword for anything you don't like. I'm an Italian native speaker, and I don't THINK I sound like Super Mario when I speak English. Problem is, to English-native speakers, I probably DO sound like Super Mario, even it I might be fully convinced I'm not, and my italian friends might agree with me. Problem is, is not for us to decide how we sound when we speak English: only native English speakers can say that.

So, instead of accusing an AI of being "racist", while you don't act proactively and try to source a real voice ? Some users DID helped with accents already, wouldn't be the first time.