While AI (Artifical Intelligence) seems to be a toolmore and more video game companies are using, Sony’s PlayStation division looks like it’s joining the ranks.
One known PlayStation character is being used as a prototype for an AI-powered version, and it’s none other than Aloy, the protagonist of Guerrilla Games' Horizon action series.
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Aloy’s AI-Powered Version Can Converse With Players
The Vergewas tipped to an internal video from Sony’s PlayStation division where we can see an AI-powered Aloy in action.
The video is narrated by Sharwin Raghoebardajal, a director of software engineering at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) who works on technology for games, AI, face technology, computer vision for PlayStation Studios Advanced Technology Group.
What’s interesting here is how Raghoebardajal demos an AI-powered version of Aloy that can converse with the player through voice prompts during gameplay. The character portrayed in the demo shows how Aloy can respond to questions, and the model even features accurate voice and facial movements.
The demo shows us Aloy in a demo setting, as well as in Horizon Forbidden West. Bear in mind, this isn’t a DLC inbound for the game, but something made interally to showcase the tech.
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The demo uses OpenAI’s whisper for speech-to-text and both GPT-4 and Llama 3 for conversations and how Aloy decides on what to answer. It also uses Sony’s own Emotial Voice Synthesis (EVS) system that it uses for speech generation. The audio to face animation is also powered by another one of Sony’s own tech, Mockingbird.
Raghoebardajal confirms the demo is running on PC, though Sony has also tested parts of this tech directly on PS5 consoles with “little overhead.,”
Perhaps this might be something Sony uses for theHorizon multiplayer gamethat’s currently in-development? We can’t say for sure, though this is one neat piece of technology, but one that’s a little unnerving as well. I mean, what if in the next Horizon game, you could speak directly to Aloy? It sounds good on paper, but it could also lead to a lot of issues regarding privacy and whatnot.
It’s not just Sony using AI to further games development, and while AI is a good tool to use, it still can’t replace human creativity. One case of AI not working as intended? It’s this latest gameon the PlayStation Store that clearly uses AI.
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