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[feynoob]

How about one voice actor clearly doing multiple roles, or every guard in Skyrim mentioning they used to be an adventurer like you in the exact same tone and inflection - because it’s the exact same voice line.

There are plenty of places that AI voice and generative dialog could be applied convincingly and appropriately that would ONLY enhance the situation.

You can do it, but you need creative writing for that. Simply rearange words in a way that confuses people. Introduce spaces, so that the AI can take some breath.

 

[Kumomeme]

10 years for proper AI sound. Currently AI is dogshit

/s

 

[Guilty_AI]

How about one voice actor clearly doing multiple roles, or every guard in Skyrim mentioning they used to be an adventurer like you in the exact same tone and inflection - because it’s the exact same voice line.

There are plenty of places that AI voice and generative dialog could be applied convincingly and appropriately that would ONLY enhance the situation.

The fact you remember the exact line but wouldn't fully remember a conversation you had with a chatbot just strengthens my point. You're looking at it from the perspective everything should be as realistic as possible, i'm saying players of these games want memorable things, not realism.

A conversation with an AI bot is only memorable for its novelty, and that'll wear off rather quickly. Hearing random NPCs say a small lines, even if repeated, that foreshadows future story developments or just generally reflect the game's overarching theme's has a lot more chances of being imprinted onto the player.

 

[feynoob]

You’re just twisting the narrative to fit your argument. I literally admitted that I wouldn’t have questioned it if I wasn’t actually looking at the screen. That wasn’t me willfully ignoring anything. I couldn’t tell. Most people when they hear throwaway dialogue from a given npc don’t sit and pour over the vocal details.

I am not twisting anything. Gaming is different than watching a video. Video depends on your attention span, which most people dont pay that much attention. For gaming, you are listening to the conversation.
So, you are more likely to pick up the AI voice when you play a video game.

 

[Comandr]

The fact you remember the exact line but wouldn't fully remember a conversation you had with a chatbot just strengthens my point. You're looking at it from the perspective everything should be as realistic as possible, i'm saying players of these games want memorable things, not realism.

A conversation with an AI bot is only memorable for its novelty, and that'll wear off rather quickly. Hearing random NPCs say a small lines, even if repeated, that foreshadows future story developments or just generally reflect the game's overarching theme's has a lot more chances of being imprinted onto the player.

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. I don’t think the conversations need to be realistic. I DO believe that a situationally aware generative AI could create some really interesting scenarios and memorable conversations. And it would take resources off of developers to focus on other things.

Are you saying AI can’t do better than this?


Skyrim had 60,000 lines of dialogue. Fallout 4 had 110,000, and snorefield had 250,000. How many of those lines were for nonsense background npcs like this? Is it really necessary to pour time and resources into writing these lines and make some shmuck sit in the recording booth for god knows how long doing all of these?

For a company like Bethesda who loves to brag about their RADIANT AI, I think this is the PERFECT scenario to actually employ AI to enhance aspects of the game. Rather than just nonsense dialogue like what was above, maybe they could give each NPC a given set of parameters and the AI will actually have meaningful conversations with each other about the things they’ve seen or experienced, work, or even the player character. That’s not something you can account for in development. How do you voice lines for events that haven’t happened?

THAT would be memorable.

 

[Guilty_AI]

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. I don’t think the conversations need to be realistic. I DO believe that a situationally aware generative AI could create some really interesting scenarios and memorable conversations. And it would take resources off of developers to focus on other things.

Are you saying AI can’t to better than this?

You are literally showing an attempt at creating a procedural, generic conversation. Indeed, if its for just creating background noise dialogue like this, it could help, but current AI will not create memorable conversations, at least not in ways that reflect the game artistic or mechanical intentions.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

AI CANT REPLICATE REAL VOICE.

Voice is not something a machine can create nor understand how the words are being said. It simply samples the voice, then tries to do a lip service. But its still a robot voice.





You can still detect something is wrong with the voice. There is no pause or any movement. You can do tricks by shorting the words and adding music to make it real though, but still doesnt work without those.

You can detect something is wrong with EVERY ASPECT OF VIDEOGAMES known to man. Just because the cars in Gran Turismo don't look real doesn't mean people can't have fun interacting with the assets. Also, think about the quality of voice acting and dialogue in the medium right now. Anderson Cooper AI already sounds better than most Ubisoft NPCs for examble.

Plus let's be real, if AI voices are that good now...what are they going to sound like in...18 months?

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Like i said, just having a convincing conversation, no matter how long winded or how realistic the voice sounds, isn't enough. There's far too much nuance in story-telling, especially in games, these conversation AIs can't pick up or generate on their own. Things such as nuanced emotional state, motivations, personality, way of expressing oneself, foreshadowing, pacing, story-structure, author's personal flavor and so on.

You seem to be comparing it with real life when you should be comparing it to what we have in videogames currently instead.

Current NPC dialogue is creepy in its dumbness. It breaks the moment we interact with it because it's incapable of responding to anything other than two or three dialogue options. It breaks the moment we ask it the same question twice. AI chat has a number of ludicrous advantages over what we've been conditioned to put up with up to this point.

 

[Guilty_AI]

You seem to be comparing it with real life when you should be comparing it to what we have in videogames currently instead.

Current NPC dialogue is creepy in its dumbness. It breaks the moment we interact with it because it's incapable of responding to anything other than two or three dialogue options. It breaks the moment we ask it the same question twice. AI chat has a number of ludicrous advantages over what we've been conditioned to put up with up to this point.

I'm comparing it with a properly written/directed story/movie, not real life. To use a comparison you will understand since we all know you don't play a lot of SP games to understand what i'm refering to, current AI can't replace hand-written dialogue the same way current procedural generation can't replace a hand-crafted level. It has uses, but it doesn't work as a replacement.

 

[ResilientBanana]

I want this. Not every NPC needs to be a voice actor. Either that or let them record lines, but then allow AI to step in for complex replies.

 

[Karak]

I'm late to the party but I just figured out how interesting / powerful AI dialogue from ChatGPT can be. IMO, the technology is already there to make characters far more interesting than what the industry currently produces.

Are developers fast tracking this technology into upcoming games or is there something preventing this from being implemented? Single player gamers of NeoGAF, educate me.

Yes 100% already being done especially for side characters and, upon my looking into it as a reviewer who covers sound, apparently, a couple of games have come out with this already done for some side characters that so far no one has guessed.

Also, while I love the craft the sad fact is the bar isn't high for a large number of games for style or ability either and AI especially trained on world models can easily add authoritative audio to games that goes beyond what a stressed-out random writer can do for NPC dialogue even if it includes none weighted world suggestions, smaller language models or those even with low variance in their prompt results.

For example, the world-weighted examples I supplied to 20 devs/youtubers/streamers for a video coming out in a couple months, there was no difference in ratings between AI written and writer-written dialogue samples when it came to detection from professionals. They weren't massive paragraphs but many were well within the larger structures of NPC dialogue during quests and quest giving.
To give you a nice delta. MUSIC created by AI was over 90% detected. So that shows you how far one has come and the other has to go.
Voice is even more interesting. Even when working on this with audio leads or with composers, discussion of this I mean, one of the major issues is that PEOPLE are varied. Many sound stilted, robotic, actual real people can have limitless sounding voices and speech patterns. We have seen this in everything from shows to movies to YouTube videos to presenters. Compressions and audio touch-ups raise the bar of lower audio and can lower the bar of better audio as we have seen in games that tried to save space due to having a ton of voice work and wanted to shrink disk size(Valhalla's audio issue with its initial recordings as well as the touch-ups on Legion).

That also does not include stuff like Eleven Labs and others are working on that is already passed what is out now and coming soon.

Lastly, there is a very interesting situation that occurs where expert bias begins and people "THINK" they can tell. However, we are currently testing that in a pretty unique way and while the percent of detection will be higher for sure I have already collected samples of over 30 AI spoken samples, and quests, that got by professionals including a couple voice actors. The crazier part is they were "sure" as in higher than a 95% certainty that the voices were real.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I'm comparing it with a properly written/directed story/movie, not real life. To use a comparison you will understand since we all know you don't play a lot of SP games to understand what i'm refering to, current AI can't replace hand-written dialogue the same way current procedural generation can't replace a hand-crafted level. It has uses, but it doesn't work as a replacement.

There are advantages to both methods, for sure. I'm saying the advantages AI conversation brings to the table are demonstrably greater than the advantages hand written dialogue provides. And lets face it, there's plenty of shoddy dialogue and acting in videogames these days.

If you look at the video above, AI Anderson Cooper sounds slightly off. That gap will continue to narrow over the next few years. Fewer and fewer people will be able to notice a difference. The gap in interactivity between using AI and using old fashioned dialogue trees will only lengthen moving forward.

 

[Halo is Back]

They are already experimenting with it now. Ubisoft is especially interested in using AI for dialogue.

 

[Boglin]

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. I don’t think the conversations need to be realistic. I DO believe that a situationally aware generative AI could create some really interesting scenarios and memorable conversations. And it would take resources off of developers to focus on other things.

Are you saying AI can’t do better than this?

When I close my eyes while listening to this video I can really hear the emotion behind the lines which is something an AI simply can't replicate. Those ever so slight nuances in pauses and changes in melody that capture the context of the scene and drama are just *muah*. We are a hundred years off before an AI can even reach half the level of the thespian that spoke these lines.

 

[Guilty_AI]

There are advantages to both methods, for sure. I'm saying the advantages AI conversation brings to the table are demonstrably greater than the advantages hand written dialogue provides. And lets face it, there's plenty of shoddy dialogue and acting in videogames these days.

They aren't because the situations they're useful aren't the most important ones. In any story driven game there'll be many moments of crucial dialogue that compose the story, and AI would be shody at replacing those. It could at best replace what would be otherwise horrible writing, but it wouldn't create a memorable narrative by itself either

If you look at the video above, AI Anderson Cooper sounds slightly off. That gap will continue to narrow over the next few years. Fewer and fewer people will be able to notice a difference. The gap in interactivity between using AI and using old fashioned dialogue trees will only lengthen moving forward.

You're talking about voice sythesis, that's another thing altogether with its own sets of separate issues. You can likely replace a voice actor with it, but you'd still need to curate many elements by hand if you wanted to create a convincing narrative/character.

 

[feynoob]

You can detect something is wrong with EVERY ASPECT OF VIDEOGAMES known to man. Just because the cars in Gran Turismo don't look real doesn't mean people can't have fun interacting with the assets. Also, think about the quality of voice acting and dialogue in the medium right now. Anderson Cooper AI already sounds better than most Ubisoft NPCs for examble.

Plus let's be real, if AI voices are that good now...what are they going to sound like in...18 months?

It will take 10 years for that. They can use it now or later, but the result is going to be shit.
At least the ubisoft voice is cringy and not robot.

 

[feynoob]

You're talking about voice sythesis, that's another thing altogether with its own sets of separate issues. You can likely replace voice actor with it, but you'd still need to curate many elements by hand if you wanted to create a convincing narrative/character.

That is what they dont understand. Making a voice closer to humans is tasking and more expensive, than a simple voice over.
The quality we are going to get from EA and Ubisoft using AI would not be the same as the anderson video.

 

[Karak]

They are already experimenting with it now. Ubisoft is especially interested in using AI for dialogue.

Almost every company I know of is at least experimenting or trying to figure out where it fits or if it does. Current interest, that I can gather from those I have asked, has been VERY HIGH, even if its just trying to do test voices before actors currently.

What's even crazier is how far it's gone. When we discussed stuff with Hitman's voice actor, that was now a long time ago, or Anthony Engruber and others, and their descriptions, and many others of going to the booth and then talking to audio directors about adjusting voice and how much they work(tirelessly if they care), it's insanely easy for AI to creep in. For example, AI hardware cloning and mimicking software is starting to accelerate as well. Matching tonal effects to be close regardless of a person's recording location, which is weirdly hard lol.

 

[MayauMiao]

Given what SAG-AFTRA trying to control the game industry, I'm all for AI voice.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

They aren't because the situations they're useful aren't the most important ones. In any story driven game there'll be many moments of crucial dialogue that compose the story, and AI would be shody at replacing those.

You really need to mess around with the ChatGPT stuff. This statement shows me that you're unaware of just how powerful it is. Again, I assumed it was as basic and primitive as you did just a few days ago. The stuff is crazy powerful.

You're talking about voice sythesis, that's another thing altogether with its own sets of separate issues. You can likely replace a voice actor with it, but you'd still need to curate many elements by hand if you wanted to create a convincing narrative/character.

Right, imagine employing a writer at a studio for 5 years at 40 hours a week. Now imagine employing an AI prompt engineer for the same duration. Writing and voice acting isn't really improving. It has plateued for years. AI sound synthesis and interactivity is improving at a blistering rate.

 

[Guilty_AI]

You really need to mess around with the ChatGPT stuff. This statement shows me that you're unaware of just how powerful it is. Again, I assumed it was as basic and primitive as you did just a few days ago. The stuff is crazy powerful.

I do. I also read a lot. And in a medium where people will pick apart 3 word phrases for nuance and meaning, AI dialogue would be extremely boring to go through.

When Melville writes "Call me Ishmael", its possible to infer a lot of things from the intentions of the author to the overarching theme of the story and the personality of the character.

If an AI wrote "Call me Ishmael", its an algorithm which concluded that phrase sounded like what a human would write. It's devoid of any purpose and meaning other than sounding convincing. It's dull.

Right, imagine employing a writer at a studio for 5 years at 40 hours a week. Now imagine employing an AI prompt engineer for the same duration. Writing and voice acting isn't really improving. It has plateued for years. AI sound synthesis and interactivity is improving at a blistering rate.

That's not how writing contracts work. Also, you only think it isn't improving because all you play are DEI-ridden GAAS.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I do. I also read a lot. And in a medium where people will pick apart 3 word phrases for nuance and meaning, AI dialogue would be extremely boring to go through.

AI dialogue is guided by programmers. It's as boring as the human who crafts with it.

When Melville writes "Call me Ishmael", its possible to infer a lot of things from the intentions of the author to the overarching theme of the story and the personality of the character.

I don't think you quite understand the videogame market. The people who play videogames and put up with some truly terrible dialogue and voice acting (currently) aren't comparing games to Moby Dick. AI doesn't need to be better than the old model in every conceivable metric before it's implemented. That's not how progress ever works.

If an AI wrote "Call me Ishmael", its an algorithm which concluded that phrase sounded like what a human would write. It's devoid of any purpose and meaning other than sounding convincing. It's dull.

You don't seem to understand what modern AI chat can actually do, or how it's shaped by human input. Again, you have to see this stuff for yourself. It's way more powerful than you realize. The progress being made in this field would make your head spin.

That's not how writing contracts work. Also, you only think it isn't improving because all you play are DEI-ridden GAAS.

That is how jobs work though. You pay people to craft using tools (AI)

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

some it's already being written by NPCs

 

[Guilty_AI]

AI dialogue is guided by programmers. It's as boring as the human who crafts with it.

That's not how chatbot AIs work.

I don't think you quite understand the videogame market. The people who play videogames and put up with some truly terrible dialogue and voice acting (currently) aren't comparing games to Moby Dick.

Again, your perspective is that of someone who only plays DEI-ridden GAAS. You put up with terrible dialogue and voice acting because you're only interested in that winner winner chicken dinner.

You don't seem to understand what modern AI chat can actually do, or how it's shaped by human input. Again, you have to see this stuff for yourself. It's way more powerful than you realize. The progress being made in this field would make your head spin.

A robot is a robot. Whatever it puts out will be devoid of meaning and personality. It'll be something made to sound convincing under X set of paramaters and nothing more. It does not understand what it writes, nor it understands the sort of effects that writing will have on its readers. Like i said, no different from a procedurally generated level. No matter how beautiful NMS planets are, an entire solar system there still isn't half as fun and engaging as a DOOM level.

That is how jobs work though. You pay people to craft using tools (AI)

You contract a writer to make X lines of text and maybe give some consultancy, not to go to work for 5 years like some office job.

 

[peek]

My guess for a timeline would be yesterday.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

sign me up

 

[Icymanipulator]

5-10 years
Will help tremendously with unimportant NPCs.
I still think main / important characters will get humans VAs though.

 

[sharp weiner]

I feel like it would be more impactful for it to be the main character.

Seaman 2025

 

[Kamina]

The NPCs that are not story relevant, with meaningless banter, will likely be covered by AI sooner than later.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

That's not how chatbot AIs work.

It's exactly how they work...



Your "Call me Ismael" line is a lost battle. We've already crossed the Rubicon there. The above video is from a year ago. This stuff is advancing at a blistering rate. I urge you to look into it because it's going to hit games pretty hard. Exciting times for single player are near!

 

[EDMIX]

You are literally showing an attempt at creating a procedural, generic conversation. Indeed, if its for just creating background noise dialogue like this, it could help, but current AI will not create memorable conversations, at least not in ways that reflect the game artistic or mechanical intentions.

Sure, current Ai is that way, but I believe its completely inevitable that you see deep conversations in game worlds.

How we are seeing it progress is rapid and to such a degree we've almost never seen any type of software, this isn't even one of those "in 10 years" type things, the fuck...we are seeing this shit grow every few months.

The thing is making video now....

So the fact that can do this, means it will do it better in a few months and even better in 1 year, 2 etc.

It's exactly how they work...



Your "Call me Ismael" line is a lost battle. We've already crossed the Rubicon there. The above video is from a year ago. This stuff is advancing at a blistering rate. I urge you to look into it because it's going to hit games pretty hard. Exciting times for single player are near!

^ This.

That is the scary thing about this right now. That is what Ai CURRENTLY can do, the idea of it doing this in a game is 100% investable, it is merely just adding it to a game regarding logistics

sign me up

I don't fully thing people really get how wild the advancement of Ai is and becoming. The fact that we even have tech right now that is even better then what this video is showing is even more fucking crazy.

I'm sure we'll still see classic written dialogue in games, once this thing takes off in gaming, it will be the default majority in terms of how NPC's speak in regards to random characters.

 

[StueyDuck]

Soon hopefully. How much worse than current day script writing and voice acting can it be

 

[EDMIX]

Soon hopefully. How much worse than current day script writing and voice acting can it be

Agreed, I'm not even saying I want no voice actors, merely for the open world concepts, maybe have the citizens merely voiced by Ai to create those random experiences and evergreen end game type gameplay loops.

That shit will end up like radiant quest 3.0 lol

 

[Xtib81]

I'd say by the end of the decade.

 

[Herr Edgy]

For barks, it could probably be really useful. For purposeful writing, no, never.
Now if it's about voice synthesis for handwritten dialogue, real VAs will still take the cake, but again, if it's about voiced barks I can see AI being useful, disregarding ethical considerations.

 

[Guilty_AI]

It's exactly how they work...



Your "Call me Ismael" line is a lost battle. We've already crossed the Rubicon there. The above video is from a year ago. This stuff is advancing at a blistering rate. I urge you to look into it because it's going to hit games pretty hard. Exciting times for single player are near!

Are you mixing up voice synthesis with procedural writing? I told you, that's a completely different segment altogether.

 

[winjer]

I can see this being tested already in several studios.
But it will probably take a few years to implement. And it's probably going to require AI acceleration hardware.
I would not be surprised if the PS6 had a dedicated NPU.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Sure, current Ai is that way, but I believe its completely inevitable that you see deep conversations in game worlds.

How we are seeing it progress is rapid and to such a degree we've almost never seen any type of software, this isn't even one of those "in 10 years" type things, the fuck...we are seeing this shit grow every few months.

The thing is making video now....

So the fact that can do this, means it will do it better in a few months and even better in 1 year, 2 etc.


^ This.

That is the scary thing about this right now. That is what Ai CURRENTLY can do, the idea of it doing this in a game is 100% investable, it is merely just adding it to a game regarding logistics


I don't fully thing people really get how wild the advancement of Ai is and becoming. The fact that we even have tech right now that is even better then what this video is showing is even more fucking crazy.

I'm sure we'll still see classic written dialogue in games, once this thing takes off in gaming, it will be the default majority in terms of how NPC's speak in regards to random characters.

I'm convinced most people who hear about AI think of it as some magic piece of software that can do anything. The stuff you and Men_in_Boxes are refering to are on the realm of AGI, many of the current AI models being used and developed are nowehere close to that, nor designed with that intention. Not to mention you two are mixing voice synthesis with procedural writing when those are fully separate modules, unrelated to the other in terms of tech.

 

[Hudo]

Hopefully. It can only improve the writing of the dialog these days.

 

[feynoob]

Generative AI videos on YouTube are controlled environment. Think of it like auto tune.

Chatgpt AI voice lacks those functions. It can't replicate without human assistance.

The AI voice we have now is the first one. The 2nd option still needs time to achieve the first results on its own.

 

[cyberheater]

10 years for proper AI sound. Currently AI is dogshit

You don’t know what you’re talking about

 

[feynoob]

You don’t know what you’re talking about

I know very well what I am talking about. But keep believing that controlled environment AI voice will be the same as the other one.

 

[feynoob]

This is controlled AI voice. Takes alot of time to simply match human voice emotion.



That is why I am not convinced about those AI voices people share. It's misleading.

We are too early for the AI to have it's own human voice that can actually talk without human assistance. It needs to understand emotions and how people say the words.

 

[SportsFan581]

Who knows how long, but good, local voice generation would be so huge for NPCs in open world games. The game could connect to the cloud to download procedurally generated scripts based off of your actions in the game. Could make eavesdropping a lot more interesting. This is the one area where I think AI could be a solid improvement over what we currently have.

 

[KXVXII9X]

Hopefully never...

Already been hearing it on a couple of games and made my ears bleed. It felt so unnatural and stilted. AI NPCs still lack appropriate body language and real emotions in the voice which creates a huge disconnect.

 

[Trilobit]

Procedurally generated dialogue? I'm not really eager to see that.

 

[sendit]

Hopefully never...

Already been hearing it on a couple of games and made my ears bleed. It felt so unnatural and stilted. AI NPCs still lack appropriate body language and real emotions in the voice which creates a huge disconnect.

You're telling me you never want gaming to advance past scripted dialogue? You expect the technology to remain stagnate and never improve. Living in a box sucks.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I'm convinced most people who hear about AI think of it as some magic piece of software that can do anything. The stuff you and Men_in_Boxes are refering to are on the realm of AGI, many of the current AI models being used and developed are nowehere close to that, nor designed with that intention. Not to mention you two are mixing voice synthesis with procedural writing when those are fully separate modules, unrelated to the other in terms of tech.

You seem to ignore some pretty big truths.

1. No one said AI can do anything. Every tool has it's limitations. No need to create a false narrative here.

2. No Man's Sky has sold more copies than Doom Eternal. Just because you don't like the procedural level designs doesn't mean the market doesn't. Also, Hello Games vs ID Software...come on now.

3. Procedural level design and AI continues to advance at exponentially greater rates than the ability of level designers and script writers. Your Baldurs Gate 3 high bar is near motionless in it's ability to advance. AI isn't stuck.

4. The current model has clear limitations that AI solves. The two main issues in videogames are linear, non interactive dialogue and limited, confined branching dialogue paths. Both of which are holding the medium back as this new tech grows.

There are probably barriers to AI that I'm not seeing. I don't think you've really found any of them though.

 

[cireza]

More walls of bloat incoming.

 

[SHA]

The Elder Scrolls VII.