Today Microsoft announced a partnership between its Xbox arm and Inworld AI, a company focusing on generative AI tools.
According to the announcement made on Microsoft's blog, the partnership aims to combine Inworld's expertise in applying generative AI models to characters with Microsoft's Azure cloud-based AI solutions (including OpenAI) and the work of Microsoft Research with that of the Xbox team.
The company's spiel promises "an accessible, responsibly designed multi-platform AI toolset to assist and empower creators in dialogue, story & quest design."
The initiative aims to create an AI-driven game design copilot to assist developers in exploring "more creative ideas" creating "detailed scripts, dialogue trees, quests, and more" from prompts.
The second branch of the project involves the development of an AI character runtime that can be integrated into games to enable "entirely new narratives with dynamically-generated stories, quests, and dialogue."
These tools are intended to be used by "developers of any size, anywhere in the world and on every platform," allegedly making it easier for them to realize their visions, try new solutions, and push the boundaries of games.
I had to use a lot of direct quotes from the announcement, because honestly you can't make this stuff up. Microsoft promises "responsible" uses of AI, but the actual weight of these promises remains to be seen, especially considering how AI could easily be abused to reduce the requirement for human workforce.
Microsoft certainly isn't the first thinking about this kind of implementation for artificial intelligfence. Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot recently mentioned similar uses during the company's latest financial conference call a couple of weeks ago.
In the meanwhile, Nvidia showcased a demo of its own generative AI technology applied to characters and dialogue, and that was frankly unimpressive.
Just last weekend, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer promised to "nurture the essence of what has made Blizzard unique" at BlizzCon. Hopefully, generative AI won't play any role in that.
