Roblox Debuts Generative AI Assistant for Building Virtual Worlds
Roblox has introduced a generative AI conversational assistant to streamline virtual world creation on the popular platform. The new Roblox Assistant revealed at the 2023 Roblox Developers Conference (RDC), is tailored to Roblox’s workflows, lingo, and data and builds on the generative AI tools launched by Roblox earlier this year.
Roblox Assistant
Roblox Assistant was partly inspired by evidence of users already employing third-party generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT. The difference is that Roblox Assistant is optimized for Roblox’s domain-specific needs. Roblox designed Assistant for fluid, collaborative creation via back-and-forth dialogue. Roblox Assistant will allow users to swiftly test out ideas while providing feedback for refinement. The chatbot offers support for creators on several fronts. The AI can help users learn to use Roblox, acting as a tutor speaking conversationally, without relying on very technical language. The Assistant also boosts the generative AI coding aide and text-to-object creation tools Roblox debuted in March. The Assistant has more ways to explain, refine, and debug scripts than the Roblox Code Assist released at the time. Roblox is even enlisting creators to provide anonymized script samples to improve Assistant’s coding abilities. Participants will get access to enhanced versions trained on the community data.
“Roblox is uniquely positioned to build this conversational AI model for immersive 3D worlds, thanks to our access to a large set of public 3D models to train on, our ability to integrate a model with our platform APIs, and our growing suite of innovative AI solutions. Creators will be able to use natural language text prompts to create scenes, edit 3D models, and apply interactive behaviors to objects,” Roblox CTO Daniel Sturman explained in a blog post. “Working with Assistant will be collaborative, interactive, and iterative, enabling creators to provide feedback and have Assistant work to provide the right solution. It will be like having an expert creator as a partner that you can bounce ideas off of and try out ideas until you get it right.”
Roblox Assistant also enables rapid 3D scene prototyping from text prompts. Users can describe environments, objects, lighting, terrain, and interactive behaviors to iterate visually. Roblox is also working on a tool to generate custom 3D avatars from images that can be imported and customized. Roblox also announced work on applying generative AI to its voice moderation to catch real-time violations of its rules. The new detection system won’t need to transcribe the audio. Instead, it summarizes audio sequences to understand context and intent versus just keywords. Violation notifications aim to curb harmful behavior through immediate feedback. The English model is coming soon, with additional languages to be added later.
Roblox Assistant and the other new tools continue the company’s generative AI strategy for simplifying the digital world and experience creation. The goal is to make it as easy for those with no technical training to do so as it is for long-time coding experts. Roblox CEO David Baszucki has even suggested the movie and TV show Westworld with its hyper-real robots as a guiding light (presumably without the ethical chaos and murders).
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Roblox CEO Envisions ‘Westworld’ Future of Generative AI in the Metaverse
