AI is pretty much everywhere right now, and it was only a matter of time before game developers started leaning on the technology as well. According to The Verge, one anonymous source has shared an internal video from PlayStation showcasing AI-powered game characters — specifically Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn.
The video was shared on YouTube, but has since been pulled due to a copyright claim from Muso — a copyright enforcement company. However The Verge does detail what was allegedly present in the video, alongside a GIF of the AI-Aloy in action.
If that small clip is representative of the stage this tech is at, it definitely needs a little more work before it’s implemented in real games.
AI characters could be coming, but they’re not ready yet
The demo video is narrated by Sharwin Raghoebardajal, a director of software engineering at Sony Interactive Entertainment. Raghoebardajal works on video game technology, which includes AI, and uses the video to demonstrate an AI-powered version of Aloy.
The demo uses a combination of AI-powered synthesized voice and facial movements. Technology utilized included OpenAI’s Whisper for speech-to-tech, GPT-4 and llama 4 for conversations and decision making and some of Sony’s own internal tech. The Emotional Voice Synthesis (EVS) system generates speech, while the Mockingbird technology turns the audio into facial animations.
This allows the player to have an actual conversation with Aloy, using a number of in-game prompts. Though the results are a little uncanny, and it’s likely that this is why the video emphasizes that this is just a prototype, it proves that something like this could be possible.
As The Verge notes, this technology was first showcased internally around a year ago, before a more advanced version was shown at the Sony Technology Exchange Fair back in November. The demo is running on PC, but Sony has apparently been able to get some of this tech running on PS5 consoles with "little overhead".
Sony isn’t alone in this
Sony isn’t the only company to be dabbling with the idea of using AI to power characters inside video games, nor is this a particularly new idea. I’m reminded of a section from The Salmon of Doubt, which reprinted an AV Club interview with author Douglas Adams.
Speaking about the game Starship Titanic, Adams lamented the fact that the game wasn’t able to construct its own text-to-speech sentences “on the fly” without making characters sound terrible with poor quality audio. Eventually, this led to the game using pre-recorded lines and the limiting the amount of responses the player could encounter.
Almost 30 years after its release, it seems AI could easily have made Adams’ initial goal a reality — and the rest of the games industry knows it. Not only is Sony apparently working on adding AI characters to its games, so are NVIDIA and Microsoft.
Sadly while Adams seemed focused on crafting unique experiences for the player, for the love of the game and story, there are concerns that the big corporations are just concerned with profit.
If I worked at a video game studio, or as a voice actor, I’d definitely be concerned that the higher-ups would want to replace my work with AI-generated equivalents. And, as reported by GamesRadar, that's why many voice actors are currently on strike.
We’re just going to have to wait and see how all this pans out in the coming years.
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