Ubisoft showed the developments on a project called NEO NPC at the GDC developer conference. As part of it, the company is experimenting with the creation of non-player characters who, thanks to generative AI, are able to conduct a meaningful dialogue with players.
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- NEO NPC is being handled by a small group of researchers and developers from Ubisoft's Paris studio. They use their tools, as well as Audio2Face technology to generate facial animations depending on the audio track from NVIDIA and the Inworld language model.
- Ubisoft wants conversations with NPCs to look as natural and authentic as possible. The generated replicas of the character must match his character and situation.
- The personality of an NPC is created not by AI, but by a person. The screenwriter prescribes the character of the characters, their background and communication style, and then gives this data to the neural network.
- NPCs are trained not to respond to certain player questions in order not to harm the plot and atmosphere of the game. They also know how to distinguish the relevant negativity in the phrases of the players from gross insults.
- Ubisoft admits that its AI tends to stick to stereotypes. For example, when the developers created a physically attractive female NPC, the neural network began to write lines for flirting and seduction. As a result, the company had to edit the program code.
- "These characters don't have free will. They play a role in the story, and they have a storyline," said Virginie Mosser, Ubisoft's narrative director.
- Despite all the successes, Ubisoft believes that an actor is still needed to create a really bright character.
- Ubisoft has only a prototype of the technology ready. So far, the company is not going to use AI in its games, but this may change over time. Ubisoft notes that its main task is to create a flexible tool that will be useful in the development of both small games and AAA titles.