Today, during the GTC AI conference, Nvidia presented Covert Protocol, a tech demo aiming to showcase the "power" of the Nvidia Ace technology applied to video game characters.
The demo is created in partnership with Inworld AI, the same company focused on generative AI tools that recently partnered with Xbox.
Much like the previous demo, it attempts rather clumsily to demonstrate the tech "brings digital humans to life" with facial animation made via Nvidia Audio2Face and speech made via Nvidia Riva automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech.
It's hard to watch the video below and not feel that the attempt completely backfires, as the characters feature ridiculous facial animation worthy of the worst examples of the uncanny valley on top of completely soulless acting and frankly childish writing.
If you dare, you can check it out for yourself, but you should probably keep your expectations very low.
The press release includes a statement from Kylan Gibbs, CEO of Inworld AI.
The combination of NVIDIA ACE microservices and the Inworld Engine enables developers to create digital characters that can drive dynamic narratives, opening new possibilities for how gamers can decipher, deduce and play.
I don't know about you, but the only thing I'm "deciphering and deducing" from this demo is even more evidence (if any was needed) that human voice actors, artists, and writers are Irreplaceable.
More interestingly, we also get a list of developers and publishers (and some companies unrelated to gaming) that are "embracing" this technology, just in case you want to know whose games you may want to avoid.
Convai, Cyber Agent (parent company of Cygames), Data Monsters, Deloitte, Hippocratic AI, IGOODI, Inworld AI, Media.Monks, miHoYo, NetEase Games, Perfect World, Openstream, OurPalm, Quantiphi, Rakuten Securities, Slalom, SoftServe, Tencent, Top Health Tech, Ubisoft, UneeQ and Unions Avatars.
Luckily, this isn't the only news coming from GTC, as Nvidia also announced some games that will use some of Nvidia's less controversial tech.
- Black Myth: Wukong and NARAKA: BLADEPOINT are incorporating Full Ray Tracing and NVIDIA DLSS 3.5
- Star Wars Outlaws will launch later this year with DLSS 3 and ray-traced effects.
- Portal with RTX, the fully ray-traced reimaging of Valve’s classic game, is getting upgraded with DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction and RTX IO. It is available now, for free.
- Diablo IV will get a ray tracing upgrade on March 26th
- The First Berserker: Khazan, Sengoku Destiny and Outcast - A New Beginning join the list of over 500 RTX games and applications.
- Announced as part of this week’s GeForce NOW Thursday, Star Wars Outlaws will join the service, along with many of the DLSS additions.
- DLSS 3.5 With Ray Reconstruction is coming soon to The NVIDIA RTX Remix Open Beta
In other generative AI news, recently Electronic Arts announced that it intends to utilize the technology to drive efficiency and monetization.
