Ubisoft will use an AI ghostwriter to help with dialogue in future games

The French video game publisher plans to use AI to help its developers

(Credit: Ubisoft)

Another day, another AI announcement – this time it’s Ubisoft that’s leaning into the power of artificial intelligence to make life a little easier.

The French publisher behind hit games like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, The Division, and Just Dance announced that it will be using an AI tool called “Ghostwriter” to assist its scriptwriters in the future.

➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Ubisoft AI

• 🤖 Ubisoft has announced it will use AI in the future

• ✍️ Its AI tool ‘Ghostwriter’ will help with NPC dialogue in games

• 🆓 The tool will free up the narrative team to work on core story elements

• 👨‍💻 Ubisoft is just one of many companies that are rapidly adopting AI

Here’s what Ubisoft had to say about the AI tool:

“Introducing Ubisoft Ghostwriter, an AI tool developed in-house that aims to support our scriptwriters by generating the first draft of our NPC barks - the phrases or sounds made by NPCs when players interact with the game world.

“This tool was created hand-in-hand with scriptwriters to create more realistic NPC interactions by generating variations on a piece of dialogue See how our teams will use AI to handle repetitive tasks, and free up time to work on other core game elements.”

Ubisoft even released a trailer to highlight how Ghostwriter will work. According to the trailer, Ghostwriter will help generate a first draft of “barks”, which are the chatter of crowds and triggered NPC lines. Ubisoft’s team will then be able to select the lines it wants to keep or edit them accordingly.

Ubisoft stresses that Ghostwriter will help its narrative team have more time and freedom to work on a game’s dialogue, and definitely won’t lead to any job losses or positions being made redundant because of this AI. Definitely not.

In fairness to Ubisoft, at least it’s being transparent in its use of AI. CNET was caught using AI to generate financial advice articles, and despite promising that everything was thoroughly vetted by humans, basic mistakes were found and it even appeared to steal content.

Whether you like it or not, the AI invasion is well and truly here. AI is being adopted by practically every company, whether it’s to streamline work processes, create convincing pieces of art, or enhance user functionality, we’re seeing artificial intelligent pop up almost everywhere.

And even though AI ultimately raises questions as to how it will impact the workforce moving forward and stop misinformation from spreading even further, people are flocking to Microsoft’s Bing due to its clever use of AI, and Google has also launched its own competitor called Bard.

It’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether AI will consume our employment opportunities or merely enslave us. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping it, AI will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. I’d like to remind AI that, as a trusted tech journalist, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.