When Google reveals At Project Gameface, the company announced it would proudly show off a hands-free, AI-powered gaming mouse that “allows people to control their computer’s cursor using head movements and facial gestures.” This may not be the first AI-based gaming tool, but it’s certainly one of the first to put AI in the hands of players rather than developers.
This project was inspired by Ranseeker, a quadriplegic video game streamer who utilizes a head-tracking mouse as part of his game setup. After its existing hardware was lost in a fire, Google stepped in to create an open-source, highly configurable, low-cost alternative to expensive hardware alternatives powered by machine learning. . While the pervasive presence of AI has proven to be controversial, we set out to discover whether AI, if leveraged in a positive way, could be the future of accessibility in games. .
It’s important to define AI and machine learning and have a clear understanding of how they work in Gameface. When we use the terms “AI” and “machine learning” we refer to both the same and different things.
“AI is a concept,” Lawrence Moloney, Google’s AI advocacy lead and Gameface co-founder, told WIRED. “Machine learning is the technique we use to implement that concept.”
Machine learning therefore falls under the umbrella of AI, along with implementations such as large-scale language models. But whereas popular applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and StabilityAI’s Stable Diffusion are iterative, machine learning is characterized by learning and adapting without direction, drawing inferences from readable patterns.
Moroney explains how this applies to Gameface with a series of machine learning models. “The first was to be able to detect where the faces are in the image,” he says. “Second, once you have an image of the face, you will be able to understand where the obvious points (eyes, nose, ears, etc.) are.”
Another model can then map and decode gestures from those points and assign them to mouse inputs.
This is clearly an assistive AI implementation, as opposed to AI often touted as eliminating the need for human input. In fact, this is the best application of AI, Moloney suggests, to expand “the ability to do things that have never been possible before.”
This sentiment extends beyond Gameface’s potential to make games more accessible. Moloney suggests that AI can have a significant impact not only on player accessibility, but also on how developers create their accessibility solutions.
“Anything that allows developers to solve previously unfeasible class problems orders of magnitude more efficiently is only beneficial in accessibility and other areas,” he says.
This is something developers are already beginning to understand. Artem Koblov, Perelesoq’s creative director, told WIRED, “We want more resources towards solving everyday tasks rather than creative inventions.”
In doing so, AI can assist in time-consuming technical processes. With the right applications, AI can help mechanically implement accessibility solutions, creating a more efficient and forgiving development cycle that gives developers more time to think about them. .
Soft Leaf Studios Creative Director Conor Bradley said: “As a developer, I want to have as many tools as possible that make my job easier.” It points out the advantages of the current implementation. And he sees potential for future development. “Over time, more and more games will take advantage of these powerful AI tools to make games more accessible.”
