Sony is reportedly experimenting with AI-generated gaming characters that can have non-scripted conversations.
A leaked demo video showed an AI character from the PlayStation game Horizon Forbidden West, conversing in response to voice prompts, The Verge reported.
The video was reportedly voiced over by Sharwin Raghoebardajal, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Director of Software, and has since been taken off YouTube.
Sony used its own internal Emotional Voice Synthesis (EVS) system and AI tool Mockingbird to form the AI figure’s facial expressions.
The character was reportedly developed using technology from Meta’s Llama and OpenAI. In this sense, game-players would be able to converse with non-playable characters (NPCs) within a game in a similar way to interacting with Gen AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
In the voiceover, Raghoebardajal described the AI-generated character as a “fun prototyping project”, with no indication of these AI figures coming into gameplay anytime soon.
Sony’s rumoured developments off the back of the leaked video coincides with news that AI chip giant Nvidia has been working on its own AI-generated NPCs that game-players can have non-scripted conversations with.
