NVIDIA and Ubisoft are working on NEO NPCs - characters with AI that can react to players and environments

NVIDIA has been working on adding generative AI to non-player characters (NPCs) for some time now. During the Game Developers Conference, it showcased how developers can use its "digital human" artificial intelligence tools for voice acting, animation, and dialog creation for video game characters.

NVIDIA also hopes that its recently announced partnership with Ubisoft will accelerate the development of this technology and ultimately bring these AI-driven NPCs to modern games. Ubisoft helped create new "NEO NPCs" using NVIDIA's Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) technology and with the participation of experts from the dynamic NPC gaming startup Inworld AI. As a result, non-player characters have been created that can communicate diversely, rather than repeating a limited list of pre-prepared phrases, ignoring the surrounding game environment.

These NEO NPCs not only communicate differently. They interact in real time with players, the environment, and other game characters. NVIDIA claims that this opens up "new opportunities for telling new stories." To prove the concept, Ubisoft's team of writers created full backgrounds, knowledge bases, and conversation styles for two NPCs to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology.

These are meticulously crafted characters with "awareness of the environment and context," as well as conversational memory. NVIDIA says each character exhibits "collaboration and strategic decision-making." The company also utilized its Audio2Face technology to provide appropriate facial animation and lip sync during atypical conversations. NVIDIA suggests that these characters expand the "boundaries of game design and immersion."

The company did not explicitly announce that this technology will appear in Ubisoft games in the near future, but it is sure to be on its roadmap. Perhaps soon, players will encounter a friendly old man near the inn in the game who will say everything he thinks about the player completely destroying the entire town.

Source: Engadget