Aloy may soon have a conversation with you thanks to Sony's AI development concept

Summary

Video gaming companies are increasingly investigating the use of AI into game development, even incorporating it for character interactions.
Sony showed a technical demo with an AI-driven Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West who could talk to players.
Demon used AI tools such as Openai's Whisper, GPT-4, LLAMA 3 and Sony's emotional voice synthesis for conversation and voice.

It seems almost every week about players complaining about the use of AI art, dialogue or writing in a game. Only yesterday we reported that the recently launched Fragpunk has received a lot of slack for alleged use of AI arts in pictures for cosmetic bundles and other marketing content.

Stan from South Park and plays guitar hero and looks exhausted, with Guitar Hero AI image in the background.

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Activision floated the idea of bringing back the guitar hero in a way that was very un-guitar hero.

However, it seems that video gaming companies are determined to find out how to use AI software for video game development – including industry leaders such as Sony. According to The Verge, a now deleted video was sent to those showing a Sony Tech demo containing an AI-driven version of Horizon Forbidden Wests Aloy who had a conversation with someone.

Don't they know what happened before the events in Horizon Zero Dawn?

The video was reportedly told by Sony Interactive Entertainment Director of Software Engineering, Sharwin Raghobardajal, who works at Playstation Studios Advanced Technology Group's video game technology, AI, Computer Vision and Face Technology project. The essence of the video was to demonstrate a model of Aloy that could have a conversation with players during the game.

While Raghobardajal said this was only an internal prototype made in collaboration with Geriljaspelap, the video reportedly also showed the AI-powered Aloy in a demo setting and in Horizon forbidden West. The character's response, voice and facial expression are all driven by the AI software and not by voice actor Ashly Burch.

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Raghoebardajal revealed that Demo used Openai's whisper for speech-to-text, GPT-4 and LLAMA 3 were both used to generate the conversation as well as decision-making. As for the voice, Sony used his own emotional voice synthesis tool to replace Ashly Burch's voice.

It is difficult to think of a user case for this demo, especially for a series like Horizon. Why would players ever have to talk to Aloy, and why would she require AI-driven technology to respond? It's probably just a prototype to show higher-ups at Sony what the company has done when it comes to exploring AI.