A new leak has revealed PlayStation maker Sony is working on AI-driven characters, including Aloy from the Horizon series, which seems like a somewhat ironic choice given she is a character growing up in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by rogue AI-controlled machines.
The leaked footage shows Sharwin Raghoebardajal – who serves as a director of software engineering at Sony Interactive Entertainment, working on video game technology, AI, computer vision, and face technology for Sony’s PlayStation Studios Advanced Technology Group – interacting with the AI Aloy. AI-oy?
In the footage, Raghoebardajal asks Aloy a number of questions, such as “how are you”, to which the character replies with AI-powered voice and facial movements that she is ok, but “dealing with a sore throat”. When questioned further, AI-oy then explains some Horizon lore.
The demo shown in the leaked footage is a prototype which has been developed alongside Horizon developer Guerrilla Games, Raghoebardajal says.
“This is just a glimpse of what is possible,” adds the Sony employee.
As for how it has been created, The Verge reports this demo uses OpenAI’s Whisper for speech-to-text, as well as GPT-4 and Llama 3 for decision-making, and Sony’s proprietary Emotional Voice Synthesis (EVS) for speech generation.
Aloy’s facial animations, meanwhile, are powered by Sony’s Mockingbird technology.
Eurogamer has reached out to Sony for further comment.
AI remains a hot topic in the industry and several developers have flirted with the technology. Last month, Microsoft trumpeted the announcement of Muse, a new “generative AI breakthrough” designed to aid “gameplay ideation”. Also in February, Take-Two Interactive boss Strauss Zelnick opened up about his views on AI, calling the concept of artificial intelligence “an oxymoron”.
Meanwhile, the Microsoft-owned Activision recently came under fire for its use of generative AI, admitting some in-game content in Call of Duty has been created using the technology.
For more on the subject be sure to check out Ed’s feature: How AI is changing video game development forever.