2024-03-22 18:38:28
EXCLUSIVE – This prototype, which Le Figaro was able to test, allows you to freely exchange orally with the characters of a game. The group is increasing its internal experiments on this technology.
« We could sneak into the house by using a ladder to get through this window. But maybe you have another idea ? » Controller in hand and headset microphone on the ears, it is the player’s turn to propose an action plan to succeed in the mission. But instead of making his choice by clicking from a list of ideas displayed on the screen, he must literally speak. « It’s too dangerous, I give up »we dare. « Don’t worry, we will do everything to protect you »responds promptly, and orally, our virtual ally displayed on the screen.
This improvisation session between humans and AI is one of three experiences powered by the generative artificial intelligence of Neo NPC (“Neo non-playable characters”), a prototype designed by a team from Ubisoft Paris bringing together engineers and screenwriters. This very first concrete example of a possible use of this technology in video games, which the Figaro tested, was revealed at the Game Developers Conference event in San Francisco.
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“We have been working on AI for years. But when we saw, during 2022, the acceleration of generative AI, we chose to study how it could best be integrated into our games to improve our creative processes and, above all, bring something new. interesting to players »explains to Figaro Guillemette Picard, director of production technologies at Ubisoft.
A strategic subject
Internal experiments have been launched from 2022 on different subjects. The Paris team, made up of around twenty employees, has been working for almost two years on the design of more natural exchanges between the player and the imaginary characters populating his adventure. Neo NPC is one of its prototypes. « It’s a sufficiently strategic subject for us to have set up a team with such a level of ambition. »she continues.
If Ubisoft has its own research laboratory, La Forge, it has joined forces with third parties for this project. « Generative AI is evolving so quickly that it seemed obvious to us to seek out external technologies to mix them with ours. », underlines Guillemette Picard. The group therefore turned to Nvidia and its AI Audio2Face, which automatically manages the facial animations of a character from an audio file. Another partner, the American InWorld AI, whose language model (LLM) is the backbone of Neo NPC. « We communicated with them every day to refine the model. »explains narrative director Virginie Mosser. « This proximity with InWorld made it possible to design characters with much more depth » than what online services like Character.AI offer, adds Guillemette Picard.
In this mission, the player must sympathize with the character by leading the conversation as he wishes. Ubisoft
“A lot of work” for the narrative team
To achieve this, « there was a lot of work upstream and iterations » from the narrative team, explains Virginie Mosser. « Never before have we delved so deeply into the profiles of the characters, who behave like improvisational actors. We must ensure that their responses will be coherent by feeding the model with data on their personality, their history, their opinions, their way of speaking, and obtain a natural result. It is therefore essential to work with dialogue writers and narration experts. » The team also put in place safeguards so that the characters do not derail if the player tries to provoke them.
Neo NPC was tested throughout its creation with around a hundred players, but also Ubisoft employees. « We do not underestimate the sensitivity of the use of generative AI, which is a complex subject. The approach we took is to check what the interest is for the player, and for our creatives », underlines Guillemette Picard. During these tests, Virginie Mosser was able to observe « that half of the players had developed empathy towards a sad character, and were afraid of hurting him by interrogating him to discover his secret. The other half just wanted to complete the mission. »
These innovations will take time to arrive in tomorrow’s games. « But this learning is essential given the very rapid evolution of language models », continues the technical director. The group is particularly monitoring the miniaturization of LLMs, which would operate from gaming machines and not from data centers, thus significantly reducing the cost of this technology. « I am convinced that the only question is when all this will happen. »
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