“Assassin’s Creed,” “Far Cry” and “Ghost Recon” publisher Ubisoft has announced ‘Ubisoft Ghostwriter,’ a new generative A.I. tool that they claim will assist its scriptwriters.
According to Game Developer, Ubisoft Ghostwriter will be used to generate the first draft of crowd chatter and lines from NPCs (non-playable characters) when players interact with the game world.
Ubisoft claims using AI to help with this will enable the game’s narrative teams to work on less repetitive tasks even as they stress that the tool still requires human input.
Ubisoft La Forge researcher Ben Swanson has given a talk about Ghostwriter at GDC 2023 this week, breaking down how the tool works. He reportedly stressed the tool is NOT used for cinematics or lore, rather it aims for “more realistic NPC interactions” by offering variations on a piece of dialogue.
In the wake of the announcement, numerous game developers have taken to social media and have not reacted well to the news, saying the company should invest more in its human writers instead.
Alanah Pearce, a writer at Sony Santa Monica, says: “As a writer, having to edit AI-generated scripts/dialogue sounds far more time-consuming than just writing my own temp lines. I would far prefer AAA studios use whatever budget it costs to make tools like this to instead hire more writers.”
No word as yet regarding what will be the first game to utilise the new tech.
