Ubisoft and Tencent to Adopt Nvidia's AI-Generated NPC Technology

In an advancement that highlights the ongoing intersection of artificial intelligence and gaming, Nvidia has announced that Ubisoft and Tencent are among the first major companies to embrace their AI-created non-playable characters (NPCs) technology. Nvidia's Ace tool, showcasing at CES 2024, is now extended to partners in the form of Ace Production Microservices, which offers versatile access to its NPC generation capabilities.

Nvidia Ace and Gaming Innovations

Nvidia Ace is designed as an innovative platform through which game developers can create NPC characters using AI. The suite of tools offered includes dynamic rendering of characters in game scenes, an audio lip-sync feature for realistic mouth movements matching dialogue, and a system that can translate player speech into text. This text is then processed by the AI to generate a responsive dialogue, complete with text-to-speech capabilities to voice the NPCs, providing an immersive gaming experience.

Microservices Accessibility

While Nvidia Ace is not a new introduction to the market, the shift to microservices represents a significant expansion in its accessibility. With this approach, developers can plug into specific parts of Nvidia's technology without needing to commit to the entire platform. This modular use grants game studios like Ubisoft and Tencent the flexibility to deploy AI NPCs to enhance their games selectively.

Data Privacy and Training

The details concerning the data upon which Ace's AI is trained remain vague, leading to industry-wide discussions about the ethical implications surrounding such technology. Nvidia acknowledges the complexity in training AI tools, using a variety of data sets, while leaving questions about consent and origins of the voice recordings used in AI training. The integration of Ace into games from well-known publishers is poised to ignite further debates, especially among voice actors and artists concerned about the potential unauthorised use of their work in training datasets.

Nvidia, Ubisoft, Tencent