Ubisoft Unveils Groundbreaking NEO NPC Project at GDC 2024, France

Throughout its history, Ubisoft has ushered in new standards for what a game can be and look like which shook the industry when they first arrived and all these years later have become foundational for multiple games since. You only need look at the original Assassin’s Creed open-world model and every open-world game since to understand the influence it has had. On Tuesday, Ubisoft showed the world what it likely hopes to be its next games industry-shaking innovation. With the industry gathered at Game Developer Conference (GDC) 2024, Ubisoft showcased its NEO NPC Project, a project intended to create characters players meet in-game that Ubisoft claims can really talk to you, through generative AI to constantly create new dialogue for these characters. This effort isn’t being done wholly by Ubisoft, it’s a collaboration that includes Ubisoft and NVIDIA using the latter’s Audio2Face technology and Inworld’s Large Language Model (LLM). Generative AI tools are a controversial topic in games, to say the least. The majority of developers surveyed by GDC have serious concerns around the ethics of its use. Ubisoft however says that this project and generative AI tools are only going as far as they are valuable to developers and players. The way we worked on this project, is always with our players and our developers in mind, says Guillemette Picard, senior vice president of production technology at Ubisoft. With the player in mind, we know that developers and their creativity must still drive our projects. Generative AI is only of value if it has value for them. What Ubisoft means by this is that it’ll have its writers and narrative developers create characters with a full backstory, personality, voice, and then insert all that into the AI model. So the AI model’s job is to then try and become that character, to speak and interact with players the way that the character would. Narrative director at Ubisoft Virginie Mosser describes this as very different to how she’s worked her whole life. While also adding that this has allowed her to achieve a dream of speaking to a character that she created. For the first time in my life, I can have a conversation with a character I’ve created. I’ve dreamed of that since I was a kid. Ubisoft also wants to be clear that this doesn’t mean these generative AI models are given a whack of character information and set free. There are limitations to make sure the model stays in character, so to speak, even when players could be trying to feed it inappropriate or toxic language. We have made a distinction between the player antagonizing the NPC and insulting them, so we can properly scope what is toxic, says data scientist Mélanie Lopez Malet. It’s important to us to reiterate that these characters do not have free will. They are there to play a role in a story. They have a narrative arc, Malet adds. Ubisoft isn’t showcasing this project as the way it’ll create all NPC’s going forward, it stresses that what we’re seeing here is only a prototype, and this reveal is meant more as a way to get feedback from the industry. At the same time, Picard does believe in the potential of the project, saying There are a ton of gameplay possibilities with NEO NPCs. Regarding that feedback Ubisoft says it was looking for, at least on social media the response has been extremely negative. You need only look at the responses on Twitter to the NEO NPC Project announcement. But Twitter and every other social media platform doesn’t encapsulate the world, and it’ll be more intriguing to see what developers think of this. An awkward example of dialogue (‘awkward’ being generous) presented in a promotional image for NEO NPC’s (shown above) however is telling that this technology is still far from viable, especially as a tool to create characters in games players are paying $70 and up for. Players almost never miss an opportunity to cry out against the use of generative AI tools in development, especially when the tools are being used to replace parts of the process that a computer will realistically never be able to match. No program will ever be as complex or creatively unlimited as the human brain. Developers have been clear that they’re very concerned about what using generative AI tools will do to the industry and game development. If Ubisoft and Picard mean what they say that these tools will only go so far as their value to players and developers extends, then at least at the time of writing, it doesn’t seem like they’ll go very far at all.