Ubisoft insists yet again that its uncanny AI-generated 'NEO-NPCs' will make games 'more alive and richer', whatever that means

Ubisoft wants investors to know that it's still all-in on the AI-generated NPCs thing, according to a recent Q&A session (which you can access on the Ubisoft website). Fielding queries after a financial report, CEO Yves Guillemot insisted that there's still a bright future for uncanny NPCs delivering awkward and stilted performances with precious little intention behind them.

Alright—that's not entirely fair. There are some practical uses for AI in game development, either for boring, non-immersive grunt work that no-one else wants to do—as former WoW lead Ghostcrawler puts it, «crappy» tasks like «making the cliffs where the continent sloped into the ocean». Alternatively, you can make the uncanny nature of said voicelines the point, while making sure the actors the AI is trained on get decent royalties out of the deal, I;E, what Stellaris is doing with its recent DLC.

But when Ubisoft touted its NEO NPCs during GDC, I didn't exactly see much convincing evidence of a revolutionary new technology, and certainly not a «start of a fantastic paradigm shift». Still, Ubisoft appears to be all-in on making these things happen (thanks, Gamesradar).

«We have two groups working on [generative] AI,» Guillemot says, with one squad working on potential use cases for «marketing, sales, IT, legal, and all the other jobs» for efficiency and automation's sake. «That's coming along quite well.

»On the other side, we can improve the quality of our games in making those games more alive—we did present NEO NPCs at the last conference, and it was well appreciated"—sure, why not—«we will be able to [use it] in our games, and make them more alive and richer. I expect a lot from [generative] AI in our games to make our games more interesting, and for people to really have a personalised experience.»

The phrase «more alive and richer» doesn't exactly spring to mind when looking at this (admittedly early) prototype. Maybe I'm just being a curmudgeon—here's a demonstration courtesy of Corbin