AI in games usually means somebody got replaced. This time it means the original actor keeps his job, records every line himself, and lets a machine sand the edges off a voice that a stroke changed forever.
Here is the short version first, because the headline alone will start arguments. CD Projekt Red has confirmed that the upcoming The Witcher 3 expansion, Songs of the Past, uses AI to adjust the Polish voice performance of Jacek Rozenek, the actor who has played Geralt of Rivia since the first Witcher game in 2007. Rozenek suffered a stroke in 2019 that left him unable to speak for months. He fought his way back, he recorded all of his new lines for the expansion himself, and with his consent, a company called Respeecher then matched those recordings to the Geralt he played a decade ago. The studio talked about all of this openly with Game File, the newsletter run by Stephen Totilo, and VGC and Polygon have both reported the details since.
A stroke took the voice, and training brought the man back
Rozenek is not a side character in Polish gaming. He has been Geralt in the Polish versions since 2007, across three decades of work as a voice actor, and for Polish players his voice is not a dub choice. It is simply what Geralt sounds like.
In 2019 he suffered a stroke. Game File reports it left him unable to speak for months. He then spent years in rehabilitation, training for hours a day, and by 2022 he was able to record a small set of lines for The Witcher 3 next generation update. He remembers what that cost him. “I was so exhausted after this recording,” he told Game File, talking about that 2022 session.
He got his career back. What he did not get back was the exact voice. His voice today is lower and gruffer than the one players heard in The Witcher 3 in 2015, and that gap is where this whole story starts.
Why this expansion forced the question
Songs of the Past is set in the same era as the main game, and CD Projekt Red says the expansion is closely connected to it. That creates a very specific sound problem. New dialogue does not sit politely in its own corner. It plays in the same world, in the same conversations, seconds away from lines Rozenek recorded more than a decade ago. A deeper, rougher 2026 Geralt answering his own 2015 voice would sound wrong in a way every player would hear instantly, even if nobody could explain why.
The studio’s answer was Respeecher, a voice technology company it had already worked with. CD Projekt Red delivered Rozenek’s original Witcher 3 recordings to the company, around 10,000 lines by Polygon’s count, and Respeecher built a model of that younger performance. Rozenek then recorded every one of his new Polish lines for Songs of the Past as a normal performance, and the AI adjusted those recordings toward the voice in the base game.
Localization producer Mikołaj Szwed put the studio’s position plainly to Game File. “We basically delivered to Respeecher all the lines that Jacek recorded for us for The Witcher 3,” he said. “They created an algorithm of his voice, based on his lines.” Szwed also stressed that the idea was only considered because of Rozenek’s health, and he made the ethical case himself: “I do think this is one of those ways where you can use AI ethically, with consent and also to do something good.”
The actor is not a bystander in this
The detail that changes everything here is that Rozenek is a willing partner, not a file the studio owns. He gave his consent for Respeecher to edit his lines. He told Game File he trusts the people making the game: “The point is that this voice should be as close as possible to my voice from 12 years ago. I have great trust for the creators of this game.” And on the question of whether he can still do the job at all, he was direct: “I can play this role. Of course, it’s very good that this voice will be matched.”
Read those quotes together and the shape of the deal gets clear. The performance is his. The acting choices, the timing, the work in the booth, all his. The technology only touches the texture of the voice afterward, with his permission, toward a target that is also his own voice. Nobody synthesized a Geralt performance out of a dead archive while the actor watched from outside.
CD Projekt Red has stood in this exact spot before
This is not the first time the studio has reached for Respeecher, and the earlier case explains a lot about how it thinks. In Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion, the Polish voice of Viktor Vektor, Miłogost Reczek, had died after the base game was released. Rather than recast the role, CD Projekt Red used Respeecher to create his new lines with AI, with the consent of his family, as VGC reported at the time and recapped again this week.
Two cases, one pattern. In both, the alternative on the table was replacing a voice that players already loved, and in both, the studio chose continuity with consent from the actor or his family. You can still argue about where the line should sit. But it is hard to argue the studio stumbled into this carelessly. It has a track record, and the track record has rules.
For the English version, nothing changes. Reporting on the Game File story notes that Doug Cockle, the English voice of Geralt, is recording his lines for the expansion normally, with no AI adjustment planned. The treatment exists for one actor, in one language, for one documented medical reason.
What we still do not know
Songs of the Past remains a 2027 release with no exact date and no price announced, and nothing in this week’s reporting changes that. CD Projekt Red has not said whether Rozenek’s adjusted performance will be flagged anywhere inside the game itself, and it has not commented on whether this approach travels to future projects. The Witcher 4, whenever it arrives, is a different situation entirely, because Polygon notes the studio itself thought Rozenek’s changed voice could suit an older Geralt there. This fix exists because Songs of the Past lives inside The Witcher 3’s own timeline, next to recordings from 2015.
My take
I have spent two years watching AI in games mean one of three things: a shortcut, a layoff with better public relations, or a placeholder somebody forgot to remove. This is none of those, and I think it is worth saying out loud why it feels different.
The man did the work. He relearned how to speak, trained for hours a day, came back to the booth, and recorded every line. The machine did not act. It restored. There is a real line between using AI to avoid hiring an actor and using it to keep an actor employable after his own body changed the instrument he works with, and this case sits so far on the right side of that line that it is not even close to the border.
My one condition, and I will hold the studio to it in print: the consent and the special case framing have to stay attached to the technology forever. The moment this same pipeline gets used on a healthy actor because it is cheaper, or on an actor who was never asked, it stops being this story and becomes the other one. Szwed called it a special case tied to Rozenek’s health. Good. Keep it special. Keep it documented. If every studio that touches voice AI had to publish its consent paperwork the way CD Projekt Red just explained its reasoning to a reporter, half the fights in this industry would end before they started.
Songs of the Past was already one of my most wanted releases of 2027, an expansion for a game from 2015 that somehow matters more than most new launches. Now it carries one more reason to pay attention. When Geralt growls in Polish next year and sounds like 2015 again, that will not be a trick played on the audience. It will be an actor, a studio and a piece of software all pulling in the same direction, which is the only direction this technology was ever supposed to point.
Sources
Game File, Stephen Totilo, report on CD Projekt Red, Respeecher and Jacek Rozenek, November 11, 2026 (primary reporting, quotes from Rozenek and Mikołaj Szwed)
VGC, “The Witcher 3 expansion uses AI to adjust Geralt’s Polish voiceover because the actor suffered a stroke”, November 11, 2026
Polygon, “CD Projekt Red Will Use AI to Bring Back Geralt’s Original Voice”, November 12, 2026
CD Projekt Red, Songs of the Past announcement (2027 window, as carried in this site’s release slate)
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