The prospect of AI generated dialogue in future games

[BenzoSt]

In Elden Ring, NPC's have dialogue that is pre-written and spoken verbatim. Which is fine and good for now. But I suspect that in the future, dialogue with NPC's may become much more involved and open-ended.

Evidently, cutting edge AI-based language generators like Chat GPT and the experimental new Bing search engine have produced some unexpectedly spooky stuff. This sort of spooky stuff would be entirely appropriate to come out of the mouths of folks living in The Lands Between, where people are being driven to madness.

Imagine if instead of simply pressing 'A': Talk, you could type on a keyboard or speak into a microphone to converse with a video game NPC just like you do with a real human. It could really do wonders to bring out the personalities and background story/information in a game as detailed as Elden Ring.

This is just a passing thought I had, and wonder what other bros think about it.

Edit: As far as pairing the timbre of the voices of the various NPC's to non-prerecorded / spontaneously generated dialogue, I think the Youtube channel Prompt Pirate has already demonstrated that such things can be done. A few videos on that channel sample the timbre of voices of Elden Ring NPC's and substitute their lines. It's funny to watch!

[fauxpas]

I'd hate it.

[Lenox]

Could be cool. Also, would that mean that different players experience different results? I'm not opposed to that.

[zero]

the thing with AI generators is they just say gibberish most of the times, you just pick the "good" results.

and we all know how poor AI voices are, even if they're funny they dont exactly speak like a normal person, it would never really match up to an actor performing the lines.

[Sabaithal]

Predicted Result:
"Greetings tarnished one. Have you seen any orphanages around these woods recently?"
"Why are you asking?"
"No reason, I'm just very hungry. Please, its been so long since I've had anything to eat,"
"...So your looking for children?"
"The great god-devouring roidbear guides me so! Oh Erdtree, grant me Miquella, blade of Milkydeath!"
"I'm going to go now."
"How long must the tarnished follow the dog I wonder?" *Bursts into flames*

*Health bar appears at the bottom of the screen and Boss music starts*

[Ashtrails]

It kind of depends what you want from your game and what the developer intends with the game.

Usually, you have dialogue to give attachment to characters, generally invoke emotions, give (narrative) meaning to the interaction or explain your world.
If your dialogue is generated the way you suggest, you potentially lose all that, because there is by default no narrative intent behind it. The machine just reacts to a prompt.

Which makes it particularly ill suited for this type of game, in which (for a good deal of folks) the main appeal lies to figure out the lore and story complimentary to the action gameplay.

If you vet or cure your AI or even just set paramters or manipulate the pool of responses, you might as well just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ write yourself, since you'd need a writer for that task anyway.
Writing and dialogue is not stuffing or filler if done well, it's meant to be part of the experience and crafted, just like gameplay, sound, art.

All of these could be AI generated, but just like with all tools, the mileage in your application for certain tasks may vary.
If the indiscriminate variety AI provides is what a developer wants to go for and utilizes it beyond a gimmick, it could be fun I guess? Don't really see it for Elden Ring or any FromSoft game for that matter.

And as far as voices go... well, nah.
No matter how good AI voices will become, there is something to real voice talent that will make it a different, if not better experience. I already pay good money for a game that let's me unwind and relax or whatever.
It'd be like having a fancy steak and deliberately ordering flavorless nutri-sludge with it.

[An Irate Walrus]

I get the sense that humanity is going to regret replacing creatives (and supplanting their own work, as is happening in my academic department with students attempting to pass off ChatGPT-generated papers as their own) with adaptive-AI-generated content. Given enough iterations and enough material to learn from, it'll probably bang out something passable, but the work it produces will have no soul.

Wall-e was meant to be a cautionary tale, not an aspirational film, and yet here we are, gleefully engineering ourselves into irrelevance.

Excuse me. I need to go shake my fist at a cloud, and then probably explain to my liver that I appreciate its lengthy and dedicated service, but that things are about to get thick.

[Ermitaum]

John Connor teaching slang to the T-800.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by An Irate Walrus:

I get the sense that humanity is going to regret replacing creatives (and supplanting their own work, as is happening in my academic department with students attempting to pass off ChatGPT-generated papers as their own) with adaptive-AI-generated content. Given enough iterations and enough material to learn from, it'll probably bang out something passable, but the work it produces will have no soul.

Wall-e was meant to be a cautionary tale, not an aspirational film, and yet here we are, gleefully engineering ourselves into irrelevance.

Excuse me. I need to go shake my fist at a cloud, and then probably explain to my liver that I appreciate its lengthy and dedicated service, but that things are about to get thick.

I mean its not hard to spot AI generated stuff. Yes its coherent, but there will always be a market for genuinely human creations. AI can try to capture that...but you can tell.

I view it in a more optimistic light. AI generated stuff will filter out all the low quality crap that some people make just to try and make a quick buck.

[An Irate Walrus]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Originally posted by An Irate Walrus:

I get the sense that humanity is going to regret replacing creatives (and supplanting their own work, as is happening in my academic department with students attempting to pass off ChatGPT-generated papers as their own) with adaptive-AI-generated content. Given enough iterations and enough material to learn from, it'll probably bang out something passable, but the work it produces will have no soul.

Wall-e was meant to be a cautionary tale, not an aspirational film, and yet here we are, gleefully engineering ourselves into irrelevance.

Excuse me. I need to go shake my fist at a cloud, and then probably explain to my liver that I appreciate its lengthy and dedicated service, but that things are about to get thick.

I mean its not hard to spot AI generated stuff. Yes its coherent, but there will always be a market for genuinely human creations. AI can try to capture that...but you can tell.

I view it in a more optimistic light. AI generated stuff will filter out all the low quality crap that some people make just to try and make a quick buck.

Oh, you can absolutely tell right now. That's why I said "students trying to pass off" papers as their own; students have an identifiable voice on paper, and ChatGPT can't emulate that.

Hell, right now it can't even write anything beyond a middling-competency ENG-100 essay.

But I'm not so optimistic about the corporations that currently pay creatives for their labor seeing things as you do. Automating a process, even if it's got a heavy startup cost, tends to save money over hiring and maintaining workers, especially in the long run--and since a lot of people don't watch movies, play games, or even read for the quality of the story (see also: James Cameron's Avatar flicks, the general state of game writing with a few noteworthy exceptions, and the fact that Twilight was ever successful, respectively), it'll be extremely tempting to train an adaptive AI on, say, Marvel flicks, and then have it kick out a new Iron Man script every few months.

But I'm a curmudgeon, and that tendency is becoming more pronounced as I'm getting older, so perhaps I'm viewing this situation through too-cynical a lens.

...having met human beings, though, I think not.

[Norm Macdonald's Ghost]

Originally posted by BenzoSt:

The prospect of AI generated dialogue in future games

As an artist, I find this dilemma fascinating, but also very concerning. On the one hand, you have what amount to very powerful tools that can assist quite effectively in making an artist's concepts become a more accurate reality. On the other, human nature being what it is, these tools can easily become an overriding force in the creative process. Anyway, I asked ChatGPT if it would ever consider writing dialogue for Elden Ring 2. This was its response...

Originally posted by ChatGPT:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o_s1l1DQPws

[responsibility]

go back to reddit

[lailaamell]

Pls you dont nees to apply chatgdpt to everything just becuse its popular i dont see why for example a search engine or game would need it

[Senki]

i feel like we have many more years left before AI becomes good enough to be used for dialogue without ruining the game.

But it could definitely be good and make an rpg world feel even more alive.

Wouldn't fit into something as artsy as ER though. Maybe something like Skyrim/GTA instead.

[cridus]

boi I can't wait for robots to live alongside us, and eventually maybe replace us (I won't be alive though).
simply seems like the "natural" outcome of technological advancement :)

though a co-existence is more probable. organic beings have qualities that robots would lack. they will need each other, probs.



oh, yeah, videogames, right. I'd love to have more alive npcs in games. to make them less repetitive.

[󠀡󠀡]

The prospect of AI generated dialogue in future games

Is dreadfull.