Nvidia Ace, a tool to create AI-generated NPCs will reportedly be adopted by publishers and developers Tencent, Ubisoft, MiHoYo, and NetEase.
Publishers Tencent, Ubisoft, MiHoYo, and others are among the major studios revealed to be in the process of using Nvidia’s artificial intelligence driven game-making tool, Nvidia Ace. The expanded capabilities and potential of this AI tool were revealed yesterday (Jan. 9) at CES 2024.
As described at the Nvidia presentation at CES, the tool has the capability of creating AI-generated non-player characters (NPCs). The tool can reportedly translate players speech into text, feed it to NPCs, and have them respond with AI-generated answers. Combined with AI-generated visuals, this would effectively mean the creation of entirely generated, fully-voiced unique characters, all created by AI.
Nvidia revealed that there were several major partners to this new tech, including Ubisoft, Tencent, and MiHoYo. Ubisoft is the creator of Far Cry, Assassins Creed, Rainbow Six Siege, and the upcoming Skull and Bones. Tencent is the owner and parent company behind PUBG developer Krafton, and League of Legends developer Riot Games. MiHoYo is a developer and publisher best known for the titles Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.
Another name partnered with this AI tool is NetEase, a Chinese Internet technology company best known as the former operator of World of Warcraft in China, but also a co-developer of Diablo Immortal. Other partners included Charisma, Convai, Inworld, Ourparlm, and UneeQ.
It’s unclear in what capacity these publishers will use the AI tool. Nvidia was also tight-lipped on what data Nvidia Ace is trained on. Generative AI uses algorithms to generate new data (images, sounds, text) based on an existing data set. Responding to a question by digitaltrends’ Giovanni Colantonio, on where the data set was coming from, Nivida stated that there was “no simple answer.” It went on to explain that it uses several AI tools within Nvidia Ace and that each one is trained on different data sets.
In 2017, Nvidia partnered with Chinese search engine Baidu in a “far-reaching AI partnership," although at the time it was limited to a focus on autonomous-driving. In September 2023, the company partnered with Getty Images to launch Generative AI by Getty Images, which uses Getty Images' licensed photos to create new images.
Nvidia also owns its own generative AI model library, Picasso. However, again it’s uncertain what data set Picasso is trained on. Both Picasso and Generative AI by Getty Images utilize Nvidia’s Edify model for AI image generation.
So is Nvidia Ace the start of AI-generated NPCs in major AAA games? Probably. Barring legislation or a tilt in corporate decision making, AI-generated content seems on a collision course with mainstream gaming.