A new leak has shown that Sony is working on AI-driven characters from some of its PlayStation franchises.
The leak, which was originally shown to The Verge but is now public shows Horizon Forbidden West’s Aloy talking and responding to someone asking her questions. You can watch the footage below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-RJ7O9Tqf4&
As expected, the quality of the AI-powered character isn’t no where near the quality of having a team of developers working on it. But, as that hasn’t stopped Sony from hyping it up in a presumably behind-the-scenes presentation that went public.
As said by director of software engineering at Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sharwin Raghoebardajal, the footage is just a prototype that has been developed alongside Guerrilla Games.
While it’s clearly not up to par with traditional development methods, Sony’s exploration into AI is likely going to turn a lot of heads in the industry, especially for developers. As pointed out by The Verge, almost half (49 percent) of 3,000 respondents to a Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2024 survey said that generative AI tools are currently being used in their workplace.
Recently, Activision faced criticism for its blatant use of AI imagery for its marketing (and bad ones at that), with the community criticising the lack of effort.
It’s clear that AI isn’t going to go away and there’s still important conversations to be had in its role in game development, but some of the current use cases are becoming very questionable, especially when it comes to video games and the art form.
What do you think of AI and its use in video games? Let us know in the comments or on our community forum!
For more information from GPlayr, read about Control releasing the Hideo Kojima mission for all platforms. Don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter.