I want you to picture the scene You are wandering through an open-world game and finally find a merchant who deals in an item you really need Instead of a boring scripted exchange, you can delve deeper into the merchant's childhood problems and negotiate a better deal

This is one of the futures of gaming that Nvidia and Ubisoft are collaborating on in a digital human project dubbed NEO NPC

These are non-playable characters built on top of a large language model like ChatGPT, giving them reasons, conversations, and chats

Ubisoft demonstrated two NEO NPCs at GDC that had intrinsic knowledge of their surroundings, interactive reactions, and even facial animation and lip-syncing

Simply put, digital humans are avatars or characters created with a combination of AI technologies that are realistic but not necessarily human-like

With the addition of large-scale language models and other basic AI technologies, they can have realistic conversations and interact in a human-like manner If you have ever had a conversation with an AI chatbot, imagine it with a face and a voice

No single model exists to create such versatile characters; Nvidia's approach uses the Nvidia Avatar Cloud Engine for facial animation and speech, other models to provide lip-sync, large language model brains, and many other technologies

It is also being used not only in gaming, but also in healthcare, financial services, retail, and even in media that create new forms of interaction between businesses and consumers

For example, they are being developed as virtual healthcare agents that can talk to patients and as customer service avatars for brands that put digital faces on labels

Artificial intelligence is growing in the gaming industry: a recent survey by Unity found that 62% of game studios are already using AI in their workflows, and others are exploring its use in gameplay improving the way NPCs operate This effect could be seen in the following ways [Nvidia has been working in this area for some time and has begun exploring the concept of embodied AI (with virtual agents and robots), but this alone would not be a significant addition

This has given rise to Ubisoft's new NEO NPC, which allows Ubisoft's narrative team to create a complete background, knowledge base, and even conversational style unique to every character in the game (even those who rarely interact) This is a form of digital human being

The first two are Bloom and Iron, who use their unique histories and character traits to interact with players in new ways Embedded in the demo universe, they are able to talk about the areas in which they are placed, draw out background, and provide players with analysis and insight into the conversation

While this opens up some impressive new possibilities for gameplay and development, and even makes it easier to create NPCs because they do not require individual scripts and conversation trees, it does raise some issues regarding the work of voice actors, writers, and other creators raised

There is also the factor of creepiness to consider My colleague Tony Polanco demonstrated the Avatar Cloud Engine at CES, where we were introduced to a pair of AI-powered digital humans named Jin and Nova The two had full conversations with both players and with each other

I could have stood there for hours listening to them Or, as Tony wrote in January, "It's great to not have to deal with the same tedious conversations, but it can also be a huge waste of time The conversations are so dynamic that it is possible to spend hours talking to NPCs and not play the main game Investing in such technology "would allow companies and brands to provide AI proxies for their virtual worlds and for developers who want to increase interactivity when many players are not online

Aside from the fact that we should first ask if we can play with digital humans, it will be some time before true AI NPCs appear in commercial games Much of the heavy lifting will be done in the cloud, but some will rely on local AI chips

There are rumors that the PlayStation 5 Pro will have an AI chip, and Intel has a series of chips with built-in NPUs branded as AI PCs Within a year, we may see the first indie AI NPCs, which will be used to play games on the PlayStation 5 Pro and other platforms

Ubisoft may have a fully interactive NPC in the next "Assassin's Creed"

"Gen AI will enable smarter worlds, nuanced characters, emergent and adaptive storytelling, and other player experiences we can't yet imagine," said Gilmet Piccard, SVP of Production Technology at Ubisoft