Activision Games May Feature NPCs That Use AI-Generated Audio Reactions For Realism

A new patent published by the company now wants to add AI to NPCs to make them more realistic. It has secured the idea to make NPC reactions as realistic as possible by generating them using AI based on events during gameplay. To achieve that kind of realism, the system will train the AI by analyzing human reactions.

The patent dubbed “METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR APPLYING MACHINE LEARNING TO GENERATE GAMEPLAY AUDIO” will utilize AI tech to make NPCs have natural human audio reactions during gameplay movements. No longer will NPCs threaten to call the police just because you walked a little too close to them—like you see in GTA 5. As per Aactivision, the responses will be appropriate and justified to add realism.

The reactions may be in the form of voice reactions (audio) or gestures and movements (animations and video) presented by the human players. The captured reactions and the correlated gameplay event/trigger are used to train a neural network to generate reactions for Non-Player Characters (NPCs) during similar gameplay events or triggers,” reads the patent.

The patent also talks about automatically creating realistic NPC gestures and movements to support various audio reactions. In other words, every in-game NPC would have separate vocal and physical reactions to reflect the situation.

Artificially stimulated voice characteristics of NPCs can contribute to a disruption in the illusion and the overall virtual experience within a gaming environment.”

The limited NPC dialogue options and predictable reactions completely take away from the experience. So, the addition of the new system would be a game-changer for Activision. Making NPCs react in a realistic manner would finally stop dampening the other realistic aspects of AAA-sized open-world games. 

It’s worth noting that Activision often secures the craziest of patents. It also previously published one for sharing your in-game inventories with other players. Additionally, the company also hogged one for dynamically customizing users’ gameplay based on time.