Expect future Xbox exclusives to be made with AI as Microsoft commits to a new partnership to develop AI tools for its studios.
Given Microsoft’s aversion to NFTs, you may have hoped it’d be similarly disinterested in the newest technology trend: artificial intellegence. Turns out it is very interested in using AI for game development, as it’s entered a partnership with a company called Inworld AI.
This multiyear partnership will allow Microsoft to develop a multiplatform toolset that will also include an AI design ‘co-pilot’ to assist developers and an AI character engine that can be integrated into games.
In short, it’s all about introducing AI-generated content into video games, with the announcement specifically highlighting using these tools for ‘dialogue, story and quest design.’
This comes courtesy of Haiyan Zhang, Xbox’s general manager of gaming AI, who seems to think that AI generated content is the inevitable next step, using the ghosts in Ms. Pac-Man as an example of very early AI.
‘Though that was not the first AI in games, and it was a simple rule-based form of AI, those ghosts showed the world the endless fun that could be born of a reactive algorithm,’ writes Zhang.
‘Together, we aim to deliver an accessible, responsibly designed multi-platform AI toolset to assist and empower creators in dialogue, story and quest design.’
It sounds like the main priority for these AI tools is for Microsoft’s role-playing games. Considering those sorts of games are Bethesda and Obsidian Entertainment’s bread and butter, we get the sense that those will be the first studios to make use of the tools.
Zhang hypes up the possibility of ‘dynamically-generated stories, quests, and dialogue for players to experience,’ though she also mentions that these tools exist to ‘assist and empower creators.’
She continues: ‘We want to help make it easier for developers to realise their visions, try new things, push the boundaries of gaming today and experiment to improve gameplay, player connection and more.’
This is obviously meant to pre-empt complaints of such tools replacing human developers and putting them out of work. It’s a criticism shared by artists and voice actors who feel threatened of losing their jobs to AI too.
In fact, this is one of the main reasons the actors guild SAG-AFTRA is on strike and, if not resolved soon, this is bound to affect a number of in-development projects and led to strikes within the games industry itself.
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