In video games, non-player characters (NPCs) often have a somewhat narrow range. They may only have a limited supply of pre-written answers for your queries, but they mostly serve as plot devices or filler.
But Convai thinks they have a lot more to offer.
The AI company made waves at the Nvidia press conference at CES earlier this month by demonstrating a technique that combined generative AI with NPCs and allowed users to have unscripted, conversational interactions with the in-game characters.
“What we are doing is giving these NPCs a mind,” Purnendu Mukherjee, founder and CEO of the San Jose-based Convai tells Fast Company. “So much so that they’re able to have a natural conversation with us. You can talk to them about anything. Not only can you do a voice-to-voice conversation, they show emotion. They have the right facial expressions. And in a 3D environment, the next level of cognition is they can perceive the environment and interact with it.”
The dialogues don’t seem particularly human. It takes a little while for the NPCs to respond to your questions, and the facial movements might use some work, but overall, it’s a significant improvement over the blank looks you get when attempting to find out information in, say, Skyrim.
Cloud computing powers the AI. In the game, characters can “see” and “hear” you, as well as your voice—you converse with these characters directly instead of selecting answers from a predetermined list of text questions. Your device receives their replies, which are then locally generated into the game.
An in-game partner that goes on quests with you or just a regular villager can be the NPC you engage with. Furthermore, Mukherjee notes that there are precautions against people trying to create artificial intelligence hallucinations or having villagers in a period-based game like Assassin’s Creed debate current events.
“They will stay in character,” he says. “They will not break character. If you’re interacting with a professor or medieval merchant and start talking about something outside of that world, they will say, ‘What are you talking about? I have no idea what that is.’ . . . Developers have the complete freedom to say how far [characters] can go from their backstory and how restrictive they want to keep them.”
But, you will have more options with these characters than you do with the existing NPCs. Asking an NPC to surrender their life in order to progress in the game is one example Mukherjee provides, and this may lead to some really intriguing morality tales in video games.
Furthermore, there are undoubtedly applications for Convai technology outside of the gaming industry. According to Mukherjee, AI-generated figures might serve as marketing representatives or virtual concierges in hotels or airports, providing directions based on location-based information.
Mukherjee predicts that the technology will soon be used in the real world, while Convai claims that it is unable to disclose the names of the companies it now works with due to contractual obligations. It will come from small to mid-sized creators at first because they usually release games more quickly. Convai claims that in order to integrate the technology into games, it is collaborating with bigger studios.
“They’re being more conservative about announcing this,” Mukherjee says. “That will probably be another two or three years. . . . We have a bunch of partners, but it’s not our information to share.”
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