Ubisoft Unveils A Generative AI Prototype To Enable Real Conversations With Game NPCs
Between NVIDIA’s Audio2Face tool and Inworld’s Large Language Model (LLM), a team out of Ubisoft Paris has created a project dubbed NEO NPC. Their goal is to use generative AI to “prod at the limits of how a player can interact with an NPC without breaking the authenticity of the situation they are in, or the character of the NPC itself.” This process starts with a writing team that is not writing dialogues that channel you down a path but by creating an NPC personality of sorts. The writer creates a backstory, conversation style, and other features of the NPC to give it to a LLM where it can improvise a conversation.
Of course, this sort of thing is not without its flaws, quirks, and challenges, which the team discusses in its news release. You may potentially encounter the problem of AI models not acting like the character that was intended, or, as data scientist Mélanie Lopez Malet explains, you can run into the problem of “garbage in, garbage out,” when it comes to users interacting with the models. Thankfully, there are guardrails in place that can help mold this a bit and “catch toxicity and inappropriate inputs on the part of the player.” One of the other long-running issues with AI is an integrated bias, which has to be accounted for as well.
Though it sounds like the NEO NPC team has an idea of direction, this is still a prototype, and “there’s still a way to go before it can be implemented in a game.” However, the team is presenting it at GDC 2024 to see where the industry stands on tech like this. From our perspective, it is pretty cool overall but does not seem to be where it needs to be, as they mention. However, this could change the gaming industry forever and make games a more immersive experience, which is a shift we have not seen for a while.
