GDC 2024 shows growing use of generative AI in game development

In short: At GDC 2024 in San Francisco, many studios and vendors showed how generative AI is being used to build game characters, art, and tools, and developers also raised ethical concerns.

What's going on

GDC 2024 put AI front and center, with demos and conference talks focused on generative AI, which is software that can create text, images, or other content from a short prompt (like giving instructions to an assistant). Companies showed AI tools for NPCs, which are non-player characters, meaning the characters controlled by the game.

Convai demonstrated NPCs that can hold conversations and remember past interactions. Examples included AI guides inside “Second Life,” characters in “Stormgate” that explain story details, and a cyberpunk demo called “Project Neural Nexus.” Ubisoft also showed “Neo NPCs,” where players build trust through conversation, and the team said characters need carefully written backstories to reduce AI “hallucinations,” which is when a system makes up details that sound real.

Nvidia highlighted hardware and software aimed at helping big budget games add more believable NPCs. Other vendors pitched AI for making 3D models, textures, and even full environments from prompts, including Kaedim, which can help smaller teams create art faster. Google drew a standing-room-only crowd for a session on how its AI could be applied to games, and an AI Summit track covered topics from NPC behavior in Unity to player support in “Among Us VR.”

What to watch

Developers are split. Surveys cited around the event reported that about 4 in 5 developers have ethical worries, especially during a period of layoffs. The next question is whether these tools become everyday “power tools” for teams, or whether concerns about jobs, ownership of training data, and made-up answers slow adoption.

Source: The Verge AI