Xbox has joined forces with the startup Inworld AI to craft a generative AI toolset intended for game developers. This extensive collaboration, spanning multiple years, aims to provide support and empowerment to creators in the domains of dialogue, story, and quest design. The focal point of this partnership is the creation of an “AI design copilot” capable of transforming prompts into intricate scripts, dialogue trees, quests, and various other game components. Similar to how individuals input ideas into generative AI chatbots to receive detailed scripts, the objective is to facilitate a seamless creative process. Additionally, the collaboration aims to develop an “AI character runtime engine” that developers can seamlessly integrate into their games, allowing players to generate new stories, quests, and dialogues organically.
Inworld AI’s technology, as showcased on its website, specializes in crafting characters with unique personalities and contextual awareness, fostering an immersive in-world experience. Notably, it offers developers a fully integrated character engine for AI non-player characters (NPCs) that transcends large language models (LLMs). While Inworld AI’s Droid Maker tool, developed in collaboration with Lucasfilm’s storytelling studio ILM Immersive, was accepted into the Disney Accelerator program, it has yet to be featured in a major game release and has primarily been utilized for mods.
Anticipation around these upcoming tools is met with understandable caution from developers. Concerns are growing within the creative community regarding companies leveraging their work to train generative AI without proper authorization. Notably, a group of authors, including John Grisham and George R.R. Martin, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of copyright infringement. The industry is also wary of the possibility that developers might opt to reduce costs by laying off writers and designers.
Xbox, however, envisions these tools as a means to facilitate the realization of developers’ visions, encourage experimentation, and push the boundaries of contemporary gaming. In the official announcement, Haiyan Zhang, General Manager of Gaming AI, expressed the commitment to collaboration and innovation with game creators within Xbox studios and third-party studios, aiming to develop tools that meet their needs and inspire new possibilities for future games.
