Hear AI Todd Howard declare The Elder Scrolls 6 will let players have sex with NPCs

Todd Howard did once say he wants more depth and better AI in future Bethesda games, but I'm not sure this is what he meant. Thanks to AI vocal synthesis software trained on Todd Howard's voice, a YouTuber has made it sound like Skyrim's game director gave a rousing presentation in which he explained The Elder Scrolls 6 will finally give players what they want: the opportunity to shag NPCs.

"Throughout the years our modding community has always been a big source of inspiration for us over at Bethesda," Todd Howard definitely did not say while standing behind a podium declaring him President of the United States. "Looking at some of the most popular mods and requests, a pattern kept emerging. Things like SexLab Framework and OStim Framework, among other projects focusing on the more carnal aspects that we never thoroughly explored before in The Elder Scrolls series."

While the words Robo-Howard goes on to say are clearly unbelievable, the echoing acoustics of the room and the awkward laughter and cheering all sound pretty authentic to an actual videogame presentation. So does the way Howard insists on adding phrases like "and more" or "among other things I won't spoil" to the end of his sentences, just like a real E3 talk about videogame features that have yet to be finalized.

Though of course there's reason to be concerned about potential misuses of AI vocal training, this is more in the realm of pranks that cut up and splice together politician's speeches to make it sound like George W. Bush has just declared war on America's allies. Nobody is out there being convinced Todd Howard really did take a look at the most popular Skyrim mods and realize that what players really want is the opportunity to bang bang Brynjolf, make the beast with two backs with Mjoll the Lioness, do the horizontal hula with Hadvar, or Netflix and chill with Nazeem.

Meanwhile, Morrowind modders are using ElevenAI to voice all its unvoiced dialogue. It's an interesting project, which involves training the AI on the small handful of barks most of Morrowind's NPCs have. A handful of characters had more voice lines, most notably the villainous Dagoth Ur, which has made him particularly suited to AI-powered expansion. He's even got his own radio station in Fallout: New Vegas, and apparently plays a lot of Overwatch.

While they don't include the NSFW likes of Schlongs of Skyrim or The Erotic Adventures of Misty Skye, here are our lists of the best Skyrim mods and the best Skyrim Special Edition mods. Stay tuned to find out whether The Elder Scrolls 6 will make the cut for our best sex games list.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.