Ubisoft has revealed a new AI powered tool called Ghostwriter that it has been internally developing, as a tool to help save scriptwriters time by taking care of smaller, though still time-consuming parts of writing a game, like barks and other background NPC lines.
Barks, for those unaware, is the jargon used to describe few-word phrases said by NPC’s at different time. Things like “Grenade, watch out!” or “Enemy spotted!” can qualify as barks.
They can also be the one or two lines you hear walking by an NPC in an open-world game, small lines that can do wonders to immerse you in the world of the game, when executed well.
In a video revealing the tool, Ubisoft describes that it’ll be used to generate a “first draft” of the lines that’ll actually make it into the game, at which point a member of the narrative team will go through to edit and curate the generated suggestions into lines that’ll actually appear in a final product.
AI being used as a tool to write anything has been a controversial topic online to say the least, and while this Ghostwriter tool may very well make development more efficient for narrative teams, it’ll be interesting to see how players react.
More interesting will be to see if players can even notice the difference, it’s even possible Ubisoft has already begun using it with recent releases like Far Cry 6, Watch Dogs Legion and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Source – [Ubisoft]