An internal video from Sony’s PlayStation gaming division has been leaked online, showing a version of the main character from the game Horizon Forbidden West controlled by AI from OpenAI.
An internal video from Sony’s PlayStation gaming division has been leaked online, showing a version of the main character from the game Horizon Forbidden West controlled by AI from OpenAI.
This video was shared with The Verge by an anonymous insider. It was soon removed from YouTube due to a copyright infringement claim.
It featured the voice of Sharvin Raghobardajal, a software development director at Sony Interactive Entertainment who works on video game technology, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and facial recognition technology for Sony PlayStation Studios Advanced Technology Group. He demonstrated an AI version of Horizon Forbidden West’s heroine Aloy, who can converse with the player via voice prompts during gameplay.
She responded to requests with a synthesized voice and AI-powered facial animations in both the demo and the full game Horizon Forbidden West. Raghoebardajal explained that this was just a prototype that was developed with Guerrilla Games to demonstrate the technology within Sony.
The prototype uses OpenAI technologies for speech-to-text conversion, as well as GPT-4 and Llama 3 for conversation and decision-making. According to Raghoebardajaal, Sony has its own in-house Emotional Voice Synthesis (EVS) system that it uses to generate speech, and the facial animation is based on Sony’s own Mockingbird technology.
While the demo can be seen on PC, Sony has also been experimenting with running parts of this technology directly on PS5 consoles with «little overhead.» Sony first demonstrated the technology a year ago, then showed a more advanced version behind closed doors at the Sony Technology Exchange Fair (STEF) in Tokyo in November.
This tech demo doesn’t answer the question of why a player would need to talk to Aly when playing as her in Horizon Forbidden West, or what impact such technology might have on voice actors and game developers.
There are already concerns among game developers and studios about how AI could impact the creative process of video game creation, especially with so many layoffs happening in the gaming industry. Almost half (49%) of the 3,000 respondents to a survey conducted at the 2024 Game Developers Conference (GDC) said that generative AI tools are currently used in their workplace, and 31% said they use them personally.
Sony’s competitor, Microsoft, began working with Inworld AI in 2023 to develop tools for Xbox that would allow developers to create characters, stories, and quests with artificial intelligence.
Recently, Microsoft Research, in collaboration with Ninja Theory (known for the Hellblade trilogy) , created Muse, the first generative AI model that can create game environments based on visuals or player actions. It was trained on the failed online game Bleeding Edge.
