Last month, Union Sag AFTRA, representing video game performers and other actors, ended its almost a year of strikes with a tentative agreement on a “guard rail” for the use of artificial intelligence.
The gaming industry is in turmoil, publishers are using AI to augment the work of voice actors and writers, and are slowly spurting it to realistically replace it.
And we are not just about scripts and speech lines generated by algorithms. In a not too distant future, gamers could interact with AI-powered agents and set new precedents for immersion levels. As New York Times Reports show that we have already had a glimpse into such a future.
Two years ago, Australian tech company Replica Studios released a demo of the game based on the “The Matrix” franchise. Non-playable characters with generative AI were given a real-time response voice to human gamers with microphones.
Things got uneasy pretty quickly, and some NPCs expressed an unsettling level of crappiness when they realized they weren't realised. It must have been a strange experience for gamers and reminiscent of heart-bending source materials. This assumes that reality itself can become a machine-created simulation experience.
“I need to get out of this simulation and go back to my wife,” one man told gamers at the demonstration. NYT. “Can't you see me suffering?”
“What does that mean?” said the woman. “Are I the real thing?”
Many game studios have invested heavily in the future of AI fuel in the industry, from simulated environments and level designs to autonomous agents who can play tests on behalf of humans.
That commitment has already come at a sudden cost to human labor, with massive layoffs clashing with several well-known game developers over the past few years.
However, it is still unclear how long it will take for AI-powered tools to become popular in the industry.
“There's a huge gap between the prototype and the production,” said Kylan Gibbs, AI Tech Company Inworld AI CEO. NYT.
Even replica studios, the company behind the “Matrix”-inspired demonstrations, continued last year as costs swelled and competition grew.
However, other companies, including heavy hitters like Sony and Nvidia, are committed to living in the world of video games with simulated people.
However, many of these AI models remain extremely expensive to implement and can exacerbate industry problems with rising costs.
“How do you push the research community in a more useful direction?” Gibbs said. NYT. “It's a cheap way to make a game, but it costs 5,000 times more to run the game, so is it actually cheaper?”
Others in the industry are seeking to keep humans at the heart of video games, or cite concerns that LLM-powered NPCs can lead to all sorts of unpredictable and potentially offensive behavior.
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