Online gaming platform Roblox has once again turned to artificial intelligence to make it easier to create new games

Roblox is competing with the increasingly similar Fortnite for users' attention, focusing on the fact that anyone can build games and worlds on the platform, making the process simpler

Previously, the company revealed AI coding assistance that reduces the complexity of adding scripts to objects and an AI-powered translation tool available for all users to chat with

This new update, currently only available in the developer environment, will make it relatively easy to import basic 3D objects and give them textures of your choice, or create avatars of that particular world in any style imaginable

A priority for the Roblox development team was to use AI to quickly create games, extend existing games, and add new in-game content

Last year they launched a coding assistant similar to GitHub Copilot but specific to Roblox's architecture; it ran for 11 months, during which time over 300 million characters of code were proposed

According to Roblox's game development studio, Toya Play, efficiency has increased by 5% since using Code Assist, and is expected to improve further as other AI tools come online

Stefano Corazza, Roblox's studio head, said in my briefing prior to this announcement that in the future, entire worlds may be generated with simple text prompts For now, the focus is on avatars and textures, but other features are in the development pipeline

They are starting with AI-generated avatars as a way to improve in-game character creation The Avatar Auto Setup, shown at GDC in San Francisco, converts a 3D body mesh into a live, animated avatar that users can adopt in-game

With a simple mouse click, the AI automatically handles the entire process, including rigging and skinning of the 3D model Doing this manually would take days for some users

This is something that other companies, such as Leonardo AI and Adobe, have adopted as a way to bring object files to life It uses traditional AI-generated image technology to "wrap" objects

Developers can apply new textures to objects imported outside of Roblox or from the Roblox store with a simple text and a click of a button This applies not only to bags and tables, but also to animals and animatable characters

Currently, it cannot handle animation of 3D objects But that is something that can be done using the AI coding assistant announced a year ago, and creating the 3D objects themselves from text is something that Corazza is investigating

I was shown a demo of the tool by Corazza With a simple text prompt, he was able to apply a denim texture to a backpack Not only was the texture applied to the entire object, but the buckles and folds were rendered to match the actual object

The texture generator could handle a variety of textures, including wood planks, metals, and fur patterns, with different options to create, for example, gold, copper, and silver trophies

Avatar generation was surprisingly fast during the demo and is currently only available on development consoles, but Corazza said that in the future they hope to make it accessible to players along with texture generation

This will give players more control over the appearance of their world, allowing them to make changes with just a simple text prompt rather than a list of menu settings This could be enabled by game developers as an additional feature

The problem, he said, is to lower both the cost and computational requirements for generating these types of files before they become more widely available

The automatic avatar setup and texture generator are only available as beta features, with options enabled in the beta menu of the Roblox Studio app

Avatars are an early alpha feature and need a lot of work to be production-ready, but the demo of this tool was impressive, allowing me to create a cyberpunk-style avatar in seconds The texture generator is an open public beta

For now, it is not clear when it will be available without the beta enabled, as Roblox is still gathering feedback on performance and quality

In the future, entire worlds may be generated from simple text prompts Users may also be able to build their own worlds from within existing games or create buildings based on text prompts or images with a single click

"At GDC," said Nick Tornow, vice president of creator engineering at Roblox, "we are supporting our vision of enabling anyone, anywhere to create anything by creating, expanding, and monetizing on our platform with new technologies and opportunities

"Our new AI technology helps everyone from indie developers to professional game studios quickly create rich and engaging content on the Roblox platform

The goal is to create tools that allow creators to turn ideas into games almost as fast as they come up with original ideas With these tools, creators will be able to focus on their creative ideas and not have to spend so much time implementing them"