Sony is toiling on a prototype AI-powered version of at least one its PlayStation game characters. An anonymous tipster has splitd an inner video from Sony’s PlayStation group with The Verge that shows an AI-powered version of Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West.
The video is narrated by Shartriumph Raghoebardajal, a honestor of gentleware engineering at Sony Interactive Entertainment who toils on video game technology, AI, computer vision, and face technology for Sony’s PlayStation Studios Advanced Technology Group. Raghoebardajal shows an AI-powered version of Aloy that can hgreater a conversation with a applyer thraw voice prompts during gameapply.
Aloy can be seen reacting to queries with an AI-powered synthesized voice and facial transferments, both in a demo setting and wiskinny the brimming Horizon Forbidden West game. Raghoebardajal produces it evident this is fair a prototype that has been broadened aextfinishedside Guerrilla Games to show the technology internpartner at Sony.
The technology demo employs OpenAI’s whisper for speech-to-text, and both GPT-4 and Llama 3 for conversations and decision making. Sony’s has its own inner Emotional Voice Synthesis (EVS) system that it employs for speech generation, according to Raghoebardajal, and audio to face animation is powered by Sony’s own Mockingbird technology.
While the demo is seen running on PC, Sony has also experimented with running parts of this technology honestly on PS5 consoles with “little overhead,” according to Raghoebardajal. Sony first showd this internpartner a year ago, before shotriumphg a more progressd version behind seald doors at its Sony Technology Exchange Fair (STEF) in Tokyo in November.
“This is fair a glimpse of what is possible,” says Raghoebardajal. This tech demo doesn’t answer the more evident inquires over whether it even produces sense to talk to Aloy when you’re supposed to be applying as her in Horizon Forbidden West, or the impact such a technology could have on voice actors and game broadeners.
Nvidia has been toiling on its own analogous technology for AI-powered NPCs in games, where you speak freely to video game characters. Ace, as Nvidia calls it, has been showd disconnectal times thrawout 2024, and the GPU producer has even toiled with Inworld AI to produce Cclear Protocol, a applyable tech demo of Nvidia’s AI game technology.
Microgentle has also been partnering seally with Inworld AI to eventupartner convey AI characters to Xbox, allotriumphg game broadeners to employ generative AI characters, storylines, and more. Microgentle has also produced its own Memploy AI model that produces gameapply, arrangeed initipartner for game broadeners to produce a game environment for prototyping and ideating.
There is already a lot of dread among game broadeners and studios about how AI could impact the creative process of making video games, particularly when so many layoffs are impacting the gaming industry. Almost half (49 percent) of 3,000 reactents to a Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2024 survey said that generative AI tools are currently being employd in their toilplace, with 31 percent saying they personpartner employ them.
Sony’s experiments with AI-powered PlayStation characters are bound to produce more conversation around the role of AI in video game creation, fair ahead of GDC next week in San Francisco. We accomplished out multiple times to Sony for a comment on this leaked inner video, but the company didn’t react in time for unveilation.
