Nvidia teams up with Ubisoft to showcase AI-powered NPCs for games

Nvidia has made a bunch of announcements this past week at the GDC and GTC conferences. Today, we're getting another one, with Nvidia teaming up with Ubisoft to demonstrate AI-powered NPCs for games. 

Game developers are looking towards AI to speed up various processes. The creation of background, NPC characters is at the top of the list. The Nvidia ACE suite has tools for this, allowing developers to quickly generate voiced NPCs with full facial animations. As part of a demo shown at GDC, Ubisoft, Nvidia and Inworld AI teamed up to showcase exactly how this could work for future projects.

Using InWorld's Character Engine and LLM technology, developers can create a knowledge base and conversational style for individual NPCs. Then, Nvidia's Audio2Face tool can be used to quickly generate real-time facial animations based on the voice track.

These NPCs are being referred to as ‘NEO NPCs'. In three demo scenarios, we see these NPCs demonstrate environmental and contextual awareness, reacting in real-time with animations and reactions. With some configuration, NPCs can also have conversation memory and make ‘strategic' decisions.

Speaking on this latest tech demo, Ubisoft's SVP of Production Technology, Guillemette Picard, said: “Gen AI will enable player experiences that are yet to be imagined, with smarter worlds, nuanced characters, and emergent and adaptive narratives. By partnering with NVIDIA on our NEO NPCs prototype: NVIDIA's Audio2Face solution helped us to create deeper immersion through real-time facial animations for truly improvisational NPC conversations.”

The demo goes to show that AI tools are becoming ready for game development production. Some studios are already using AI tools for voice acting. It may not be long before we see AI powering the creation of background characters and quest-giving NPCs.

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KitGuru Says: It is clear that AI is here to stay and will be widely used in various creative industries. Given that the timeline for developing AAA games has ballooned to 6+ years with massive budgets, I'm sure publishers are keen to utilise AI wherever possible to speed up development timelines. 

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