Games: Industry embraces AI despite fear and insecurity – 07/04/2023 – Tech

The gaming industry is excited about advances in artificial intelligence. Tools and talks about this technology were highlighted at this year’s GDC (Game Developers Conference), held in San Francisco. Still, the mere addition of the letters AI seemed to invoke fear in many of the event’s attendees.

This does not happen for lack of knowledge, since at least since the 1980s the game industry has been experimenting with automated content creation. However, the popularization and technological advancement of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Midjourney, act as a catalyst for the insecurity of workers in the sector. Especially for those who are starting their careers in an already bad economic environment, with frequent waves of layoffs in technology companies.

The fear even showed up in major launches at GDC. By revealing its Ghostwriter, a tool that uses short lines of secondary characters with artificial intelligence, Ubisoft was careful to highlight that the instrument needs human participation to review and select the best lines of dialogue. According to the company, the tool is not replacing screenwriters, but relieving them of one of their most boring and laborious tasks.

At the conference, Ubisoft research and development team scientist and Ghostwriter creator Ben Swanson stated that the tool was developed in conjunction with the company’s writing team. Still, he admitted that many viewed the news with suspicion.

Outside the French gaming giant, there was more criticism than praise. “These sidelines are the first paying (and credible) work that many screenwriters get early in their careers,” said Sam Winkler, senior writer at Gearbox, who has worked on titles such as “Borderlands 3” and “Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands,” on twitter. “If you treat a part of your story as boring, guess what? It will be,” she added.

Alanah Pearce, screenwriter who worked on “God of War Ragnarök”, also used the social network to criticize Ubisoft’s novelty. “Having to edit AI-generated dialogue seems more time-consuming than writing it myself. I would prefer big studios to use the budget of tools like this to hire more writers,” he wrote.

Ubisoft’s tool, however, is just the beginning of what promises to be a revolution in the way video games are produced and played.

The Californian startup Inworld, for example, exhibited at its booth at the conference an artificial intelligence tool that makes NPCs (non-playable characters) respond instantly to questions and comments created by the player. It works similarly to ChatGPT, but following parameters for the character established by the developer. It is possible to see the tool in action in a mod of the game “Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord” and in video of the game “Origins”, being developed by Inworld itself.

The program works well in the technical part, but the quality of the dialogues (generic and repetitive) and the synthesized voice of the artificial intelligence leave something to be desired and show that the technology is still far from the high standard demanded by first-class games, the so-called “AAA “. Still, it’s a start.

The Chinese game creation platform Yahaha was present at GDC showing how AI can facilitate game development, even by amateurs. With the system taken by the company to the conference, it was possible to create 3D games without knowing practically anything about programming or design. It was enough for the user to describe in text what he wanted and the AI ​​would be in charge of searching and placing objects, lighting, animations, etc.

This is one of the most promising uses for artificial intelligence in games, so much so that other game creation platforms such as Roblox and Unityhave been developing and experimenting with similar tools.

According to Andrew Maximov, former technical art director at Naughty Dog and founder of Promethean AI, a company that creates artificial intelligence tools, this use of technology scares workers who have spent years of their lives and lots of money studying and specializing in programs to develop games.

“Looking at the complexity of our industry and the way courses and the software industry make you think that tools are all you need for your profession, it’s very easy to get lost in the idea that tools are who you are. “, said Maximov. “But that’s not true, just as composing a song is not the same thing as knowing how to play an instrument.”

In his lecture on how AI can transform the games industry, Maximov highlighted more the analytical capacity of these tools –to understand, catalog and make resources available in a database, for example– than their purely generative capacities, about which he still ethical and legal issues loom.

The legislation on the registration of intellectual property generated by artificial intelligence is not consolidated. Maximov also warned of the risks of tools that use as raw material images captured indiscriminately on the internet to plagiarize artists and create figures based on material under copyright protection.

“If you want to get rich quick, take a game that creates user-generated content with one of these tools, create thousands of images, reverse search until you find an image that looks like something someone has already done, look up the artist and convince him to sue the company that made the game,” Maximov said. He is one of the witnesses for the prosecution in the lawsuit filed by artists against DreamUp, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion platforms, which create AI images from text commands.

“Any game company that has some sort of control over their intellectual property will discourage the use of this type of content until all legal issues are resolved.”

Whatever the outcome of the lawsuits and the advancement of technology, there is no doubt that the future of game development will be linked in some way to artificial intelligence tools. With that, the biggest risk is not losing your job to an AI, but to someone who knows how to work with it.

The journalist traveled at the invitation of Abragames (Brazilian Association of Electronic Games Developers)