The Witcher 3 Used AI to Give Geralt His Old Voice Back

Geralt of Rivia has had the same Polish voice for twenty years. A stroke nearly took it — and the fix CD Projekt Red chose was not a recast. It was the actor's own younger voice, rebuilt by AI, with the actor sitting in the booth.

Jacek Rozenek has played Geralt in every major Witcher game, which makes him to Polish players what Doug Cockle is to everyone who plays in English: the voice the character is supposed to have. In 2019 Rozenek suffered a severe stroke that left him temporarily unable to speak. When he could perform again, he could — but the tonality and quality of his voice had changed. Deeper, rougher, further from the Geralt recorded for The Witcher 3 more than a decade ago.

New lines beside a twelve-year-old voice

That gap is a real production problem for Songs of the Past, the third Witcher 3 expansion, due next year — twelve years after the original game. The expansion's new lines sit directly beside recordings from the original game, and CD Projekt's localisation producer Mikołaj Szwed told Game File the mismatch is exactly what they were solving: an older, deeper voice next to the 12-year-old one "could kind of take people out of the experience."

So, with Rozenek's consent, the studio brought in Respeecher, the voice-technology company it had worked with before. An AI trained on Rozenek's previous Witcher performances treats the lines he records now, pulling them back toward the Geralt of the original game. Game File, which first reported the arrangement, heard both versions: the untreated voice "deep and gravelly" and noticeably rougher than the original recordings; the treated voice "far smoother," younger-sounding, and close to the Witcher 3 Geralt players know.

Rozenek's own measure of it is simple. "The point is that this voice should be as close as possible to my voice from 12 years ago," he said, adding that he has "great trust" in the game's creators. Szwed put the studio's line just as plainly: "I do think this is one of those ways where you can use AI ethically with consent and also to do something good."

Rozenek has told the story in his own words since. The studio's REDstreams anniversary special is built around an interview with him, recorded after the stroke — in Polish, which is rather the point of this whole story.

Phantom Liberty set the precedent

This is not CD Projekt's first time at this decision. For Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion in 2023, the studio used Respeecher to produce new lines for Viktor Vektor after his Polish actor, Miłogost Reczek, died in 2021. Reczek's sons gave their blessing, and the studio chose the technology over recasting a role it did not want to hand to a stranger. The Rozenek case is the living version of the same choice: the performer is here, he consents, and the AI is aimed at his own voice rather than a replacement for him.

Songs of the Past, twelve years on

The expansion itself is its own unlikely fact. Songs of the Past adds an entirely new region, Letten, and builds its main story around Geralt's missing friend Dandelion, whose family lives there. A remastered version of The Witcher 3 arrived a couple of months ago to set the table — which is also why the expansion skips the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game entirely.

None of that makes the larger argument go away, and the story does not pretend it does. Voice actors across the industry have spent two years fighting over exactly this technology, mostly in cases where consent was murky and the performer's leverage was small. What is different here is the shape of the deal: a named actor, a stated consent, a technology pointed at restoring what an illness took, and a studio willing to say its reasoning out loud. Whether that becomes the industry's template or stays the exception is the argument now — but the next time Geralt speaks Polish, the voice will be Rozenek's twice over: the man in the booth, and the man he was twelve years ago, carrying him back.