It’s often said that the sky is the limit for AI. From helping with content creation to playing a noteworthy role in the healthcare industry, AI tools, in 2023, are promising to help mankind in unprecedented ways. One such area, where the scope for AI will always be expansive, is the gaming industry. After all, rudimentary forms of AI have been responsible for bringing our favourite games and characters to life.
Now, Microsoft wants to push the capabilities of AI tools in the development of new games that will be more immersive than ever before.
Why Microsoft, you may ask? Well, if you haven’t been living under a rock, Microsoft’s gaming arm, popularly known as the Xbox, has recently acquired some of the biggest gaming studios around the world and is overseeing the production of new and revolutionary IPs. By focusing on the game development arena, Microsoft now presents a supportive ecosystem for gaming that could help developers create truly mesmerising virtual experiences.
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at what Microsoft has in store for the gaming community.
Microsoft’s new AI tools for game development can be revolutionary
With its AI tools, Microsoft will focus on four areas that play a key role in delivering award-winning video game titles – dialogues, characters, stories and quests. To make this happen, Microsoft has collaborated with Inworld AI to work on new Xbox tools for game developers.
This multi-year partnership with Inworld AI will offer an AI design copilot system that Xbox game developers will be able to use to create smartly detailed scripts, bigger dialogue trees and special dialogues for quests/missions. At the same time, the tools will also offer an AI character runtime engine to be integrated into games that can create dynamically-generated stories with unique quests and Non-Playable Characters (NPCs), as well as custom dialogues for players.
In layman’s terms, this translates to developers creating games that can generate their own content.
This could play a big role in RPG titles that tend to offer different outcomes based on the morality of the choices your character makes.
Haiyan Zhang, General Manager of gaming AI at Xbox, agrees.
“This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionising accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
Inworld AI has already worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Epic Games, Niantic, Nvidia, Unity and NetEase Games.
AI tools could boost Microsoft’s position in the industry
The partnership announcement with Inworld AI comes after Microsoft got the green light for its highly-anticipated acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the studio behind the popular Call of Duty franchise. Microsoft’s new AI tools could end up making the future iterations of Call of Duty completely different with dynamically generated quests and missions.
In a game like Starfield that celebrates the idea of space exploration, dynamically generated stories and quests could offer new experiences and see players returning to the game long after the initial hype train has passed.
(Hero and Featured Image Credits: Courtesy Bethesda / Microsoft)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
– Which AI tool is Microsoft using for game development?
Microsoft has partnered with Inworld AI to create a new AI toolset for designing dialogues, quests and stories.
