Sony uses AI to create an Aloy capable of talking to the player
, by Thibaut
The Verge broke the news earlier this week. An anonymous source told reporters that Sony is working on an AI-powered character prototype.
The character in question is Aloy, the main character of the Horizon franchise. Designed in partnership with Guerrilla Games, this model is capable of answering a user's questions via voice commands. This works in a tech demo, but also in the game Horizon Forbidden West.
To achieve this, the Japanese company used OpenAI's Whisper for text conversation, and GPT-4 and Llama 3 for conversation and decision-making. Aloy's facial animations are handled by Sony's own Mockingbird technology.
An internal video (now deleted) shows the result on PC. The Japanese company also claims to have experimented with this on PS5. Although it's only a prototype at the moment, we can imagine that the multinational will possibly seek to use a similar technique for other characters in its franchises. It remains to be seen what impact this might have on the future of dubbing actors, or whether there is any real interest in talking to Aloy while playing.
Source: theverge.com