CD Projekt used AI voice technology on Geralt’s Polish performance in The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past after actor Jacek Rozenek’s stroke. Here is what is confirmed, what the studio says about consent, and why this case will be central to the games AI debate.
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Store links: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past on Steam
CD Projekt’s unusual Geralt problem
CD Projekt Red has confirmed that The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past uses AI voice technology on some of Geralt’s Polish dialogue, but the confirmed reason is unusually specific: longtime Polish Geralt actor Jacek Rozenek suffered a stroke in 2019 that changed his voice after leaving him unable to speak for a period of time.
According to reporting from Game File, which spoke with Rozenek and CD Projekt staff, the studio brought Rozenek back for the new expansion rather than recasting Geralt in Polish. The tension was that Songs of the Past is being added to The Witcher 3 years after the base game, while its story is set around the same era as the original adventure. That creates a continuity problem for a dialogue-heavy RPG: new Geralt lines would sit next to the thousands Rozenek recorded in 2014 for the 2015 release.
VGC reports that CD Projekt worked with AI company Respeecher so Rozenek’s new Polish lines could sound closer to his performance from the base game period. IGN similarly describes the tool as being used to modify Rozenek’s current voice to better match his earlier Geralt lines. The important confirmed detail is that Rozenek did return and did record the new material. The AI process, as described by the sources, was applied after his performance rather than replacing him with a new actor or generating Geralt without his involvement.
Rozenek still performed the role, then Respeecher adjusted the sound
The clearest line CD Projekt is trying to draw is between performance and vocal matching. Game File reports that Rozenek recorded all of his new lines for Songs of the Past. Those recordings were then sent through Respeecher’s process to bring the final Polish voice closer to the sound players associate with The Witcher 3’s original Geralt.
Rozenek told Game File that the goal was for the voice to be “as close as possible to my voice from 12 years ago,” adding that he had “great trust” in the creators of the game. He also said that, in terms of voice dynamics and acting, he felt good about playing the role. That matters because the studio’s explanation is built around the actor’s continued authorship of the performance: pacing, intent, delivery and acting choices came from Rozenek’s new sessions, while AI was used to address the changed vocal quality.
The health context is also central to the studio’s framing. Game File reports that after the 2019 stroke Rozenek spent six or seven hours a day training his voice during recovery. He returned for lines in The Witcher 3’s 2022 next-gen update, but told Game File he was exhausted after that recording. CD Projekt’s localization producer Mikołaj Szwed told Game File that the studio considered this a special case, and VGC reports that Szwed stressed the decision was only considered because of Rozenek’s health issues.
The AI model was trained on Rozenek’s old Witcher 3 work
The technical process, as described publicly, relied on Rozenek’s own prior recordings. Szwed told Game File, in a quote also carried by VGC, that CD Projekt delivered Rozenek’s The Witcher 3 lines to Respeecher and that the company created an algorithm of his voice based on those lines. Game File reports that Rozenek recorded around 10,000 lines for the original game, a large sample set from the same role and performance style.
IGN adds a useful caution from Respeecher synthetic speech artist Dmytro Vasylets, who told Game File that the process involved dozens of hours of model training, detail work with the CDPR team and dealing with AI artifacts that “never fully disappear.” That is a notable technical admission. The public pitch is continuity, but the work is not described as a simple filter that automatically restores a past performance. It is a production pipeline with training, review and cleanup.
For players, the likely test will be mundane rather than philosophical: whether the Polish Geralt sounds consistent while moving between old quest dialogue, new story scenes, reactions and combat vocalizations. The Witcher 3 is full of small dialogue transitions, barks and quest-state acknowledgements. A mismatch can be more noticeable in an RPG like this than in a linear scene, because players keep circling back through older systems and newly added content.
Songs of the Past makes the continuity issue sharper than a new sequel would
Game File describes Songs of the Past as a 2027 expansion for The Witcher 3, announced by CD Projekt in May, and notes that it is being attached to the existing game more than a decade after launch. That context is key. If Geralt were appearing in a new game set later in his life, a changed or older voice could be written into the character’s passage of time. IGN reports that CD Projekt does not expect to need the same tool for The Witcher 4, where Rozenek is expected to return and an older, rougher Geralt would make a deeper voice less jarring.
Songs of the Past has the opposite problem. It is new material for an old game, designed to sit beside voice work recorded before Rozenek’s stroke and before the current AI debate existed in its present form. The studio’s stated aim is not to make Polish Geralt sound younger in the abstract. It is to make the new expansion cohere with a specific performance archive that already defines the Polish version of The Witcher 3.
That distinction does not settle the ethics, but it does explain why CD Projekt did not simply accept the changed voice as part of Geralt’s ongoing history. Within The Witcher 3’s quest structure, Songs of the Past is being treated as part of the same playable era. For a game built on long conversations, branching quest outcomes and countless voiced reactions, continuity is a design constraint as well as an audio concern.
Consent is the studio’s defense, and the debate’s next pressure point
Szwed told Game File that AI voice use is a major concern for people working with voice actors across regions, but argued that this is one of the cases where AI can be used ethically, “with consent and also to do something good.” Kotaku, VGC and IGN all emphasize that Rozenek approved the use of Respeecher for Songs of the Past.
CD Projekt has a recent precedent. VGC and Kotaku both note that the studio previously used Respeecher for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty after Polish Viktor Vektor actor Miłogost Reczek died. In that case, CD Projekt used AI to create new Polish lines rather than recasting the role, with the family’s consent, according to VGC. The Songs of the Past case differs because Rozenek is alive, recording and directly consenting to the process.
That is why this Witcher 3 AI voice case will stand out. Many arguments about game AI center on scraped data, undisclosed tools, uncredited labor or replacement risk. Here, the public record includes a named actor, a health-related reason, an explicit consent claim, a performance newly recorded by that actor and a training set based on his own old work for the same role. At the same time, it puts the industry’s hardest questions in a more sympathetic setting: how consent is documented, whether it can be limited to one project, how actors are compensated for model-assisted reuse, and how studios prevent a special case from becoming a default workflow.
What players can and cannot assume before release
The confirmed AI use concerns Geralt’s Polish voice in The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past. The provided reports do not state that English Geralt actor Doug Cockle, other language tracks or the rest of the cast are being processed in the same way. They also do not provide a price, final platform list, system requirements or upgrade details for the expansion.
The release timing is reported by Game File as 2027. Beyond that, readers should treat availability questions as open until CD Projekt publishes full release information. For now, the practical takeaway is limited but useful: Polish-language players should expect Rozenek to remain Geralt, with Respeecher used to bring his new recordings closer to the base game’s vocal tone.
The bigger test will arrive in the shipped expansion. If the performance feels coherent, CD Projekt will likely present Songs of the Past as evidence that consent-based AI can preserve an actor’s role under unusual circumstances. If the processing is audible, or if players feel the disclosure leaves too many labor questions unanswered, it will become another example of why AI voiceover remains one of the most volatile issues in games. Either way, this case will be cited because it sits at the exact intersection the industry keeps struggling to define: preservation, performance, health, consent and the commercial need to keep beloved RPG worlds sounding like themselves.