Ubisoft has developed an AI tool to help narrative designers write barks, according to a video presentation. Barks are lines spoken by NPCs after a trigger–such as a change in the environment or character interaction–that help bring the game’s world to life. Ubisoft’s Ghostwriter AI tool aims to lessen the tedium of writing these quips by providing the narrative team with a first draft of barks.
How Ghostwriter works is writers create a character and then input “an event or situation” for the character to experience. The tool then generates different variations of a bark, depending on the mode selected. Writers can edit further, and Ghostwriter also learns from each selected line that the writer accepts.
“Ghostwriter was created hand-in-hand with narrative teams to help them complete a repetitive task more quickly and effectively, giving them more time and freedom to work on games’ narrative, characters, and cutscenes,” Ubisoft says in its Ghostwriter introduction video.
ChatGPT and other AI tools have caused a controversial buzz recently, with uncertainty over how these tools will shape game development (and perhaps life in general) in the coming years.
Ubisoft isn’t alone in looking at AI tools. Roblox also announced AI tools like a material generator and a code assist feature at the Game Developer’s Conference–meant to make it easier for Roblox developers to create games. Squanch Games also used Midjourney for High on Life’s set decorations.
In related AI news, Google just released its ChatGPT rival called Bard to the public. So far access requires applying and getting on a waitlist, but Bard functions similarly to ChatGPT in that it can respond to users on a wide variety of topics. Google says the tool is an “early experiment,” as told to Wired.
