Roblox has announced a new feature called Roblox Moments, a Tiktok-style social feed. This feature was announced at the Roblox Developers Conference. There, it also revealed that Roblox is working on a flock of AI tools to help game development.
Roblox Moments is currently in beta and consists of short videos up to 30 seconds in vertical format familiar to those using Tiktok and Instagram reels. What makes it different from Roblox's moments is that the video is shot directly in a variety of Roblox experiences. We call the platform games and apps created by users who live on the platform. When scrolling through moments, users can go directly to the featured experience from their video feed.
Roblox is also investing heavily in new AI tools designed for creators with the aim of automating various parts of the game development process for solo developers and small teams. The company has revealed that 400 AI models are in development, including asset generation tools, text to speech, speech to text and automatic translation AI. One of the major AI products featured was 4D objects. This is a tool aimed at fully automating asset creation by generating interactive, scripted assets from a simple text prompt.
“To achieve its mission to connect billions of people, buildings around the world need to be built on a large scale,” Roblox said of AI tools development, estimating that the majority of its top games are made by small teams of less than 10 people. Other AI tools under development aim to help small developers, such as text to speech tools, which appear to be designed to exchange human voice actors.
Roblox has recently been seeing increased pressure from lawmakers and has accused the platform of not enough to protect the user base of mostly young people. The platform responded by strengthening safety tools, including a new plan to add ageing to all users using voice chat on Roblox.
Despite the controversy, Roblox is by most estimates higher than Steam, boasting over 111.8 million active visitors. Roblox also increases the rates that will pay off creators, making developers more profitable as they create popular experiences on the platform.
