CES 2024: Gamers, get ready for the rise of the AI NPCs
Generative AI is coming for gaming — whether you want it to or not.
At its CES 2024 press conference, Nvidia unveiled details of a partnership with the AI company Convai, intended to create generative AI non-player characters (or NPCs) for all kinds of video games.
Convai's tech supposedly allows for NPCs to interact with players and their environments beyond the need for human scripting, thanks to generative AI. Convai calls its AI "the future of interactive gaming."
You May Also Like
According to Nvidia and Convai, these AI-powered characters can "navigate complex instructions, display emotional awareness, and engage in organic interactions." These are things that, of course, human programmers and writers would normally have to make NPCs do.
As such, even the most AI-enthusiastic among us would have to admit that offloading NPC duties to AI algorithms could be risky for the job prospects of said programmers and writers. There's also the potential, given the "hallucination" risk attached to pretty much all AI tech, for AI-powered NPCs to behave unpredictably, in a way that marks them out as very un-human.
We'll see — because the attack of the AI NPCs is coming soon to a console near you.
Topics Artificial Intelligence Gaming
Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers video games and consumer tech. Alex has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops, and he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. He is also a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan. Alex can be found on Bluesky at yelix.bsky.social.
