Ubisoft is causing a stir with the announcement that they will be implementing an AI tool to write dialogue for their games. Image source: map, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Ubisoft is causing a stir in game development with the announcement that they will be implementing an AI tool to write dialogue for their games.
Ghostwriter, the AI program developed in-house by Ubisoft’s research and development team, will be utilised to write “barks” – short utterances of dialogue or sound from non-playable characters.
Typically, these barks do not advance the storyline of a game, but are implemented to make the game world feel more immersive and “alive”.
In the press release announcing the implementation of Ghostwriter, Ubisoft remains insistent that the program is designed to support scriptwriters by alleviating them of some of the more tedious writing tasks.
“Ghostwriter isn’t replacing the video game writer, but instead, alleviating one of the video game writer’s most laborious tasks: writing barks,” wrote Roxane Barth in the press release.
Barth goes on to say that this “gives scriptwriters more time to polish the narrative elsewhere.”
Currently, scriptwriters will input a prompt for the kind of dialogue or interaction they would like to generate.
Then, Ghostwriter generates a number of variations or “samples” that the writers can select, adapt and edit.
Ghostwriter also implements a method of evaluation and improvement, wherein it learns from the writers’ ongoing selections to generate more sophisticated and accurate results.
At least, as an in-house tool, Ghostwriter might avoid the questionable ethics and copyright infringement claims that are synonymous with other AI generators, such as ChatGPT.
However, not everyone is content to take Ubisoft’s claim that the AI only serves to support their writing team at face value.
Kotaku reporter David Smith expressed scepticism toward the company’s claims that the AI would not be used to replace human scriptwriters.
“At a certain point, if you’re going to use AI to spit out even the most rote dialogue, when does it start getting used for the more important stuff?” said Smith.
“How long does it take for Ubisoft to send out a press release boasting about its first game with a story created entirely by Ghostwriter?”
