Inworld AI Will Bring Generative AI to Microsoft Xbox Game Development
Generative AI synthetic character startup Inworld AI and Microsoft have partnered to bring Inworld’s virtual character tools to Xbox developers.The collaboration aims to enable developers to deploy generative AI-assisted content like characters, dialogue, and quests into their games.
Inworld Xbox
The multi-year partnership will produce an “AI design copilot” system for authoring scripts, conversations, and narratives. There will also be an AI character engine that can dynamically generate interactive quests and dialogue during gameplay. Microsoft said the goal is to provide creators with better tools to make extraordinary game experiences. But it framed the AI offerings as optional to put creative control firmly in developers’ hands.
Inworld offers a Character Engine that constructs virtual beings out of text descriptions. Users can detail the appearance, behavior, background, and more in great detail, and the generative AI engine will synthesize the virtual being described, relying on general knowledge databases and proprietary sources the user can include. Though Inworld has been employed for education and marketing, the chief focus of the company is entertainment, especially video games. The multimodal characters rely on a mix of large language models and machine learning tools.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Xbox general manager of gaming AI Haiyan Zhang explained in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The Inworld and Xbox collaboration is one of the growing number of generative AI video game projects. Roblox has been quick to capitalize on the technology, envisioning an entire virtual universe fueled by generative AI, with the recently acquired voice AI moderation startup Speechly to help with interactions and guide its upcoming generative AI voice assistant for building those worlds. Still, Inworld’s technology for producing plots and characters responsive to user interaction makes for a robust toolkit.
“Expanding the capabilities of the character engine will be a core focus of the collaboration, with a dual emphasis on expanding both the engine’s AI modalities and optimizing it for performance at runtime. While we’re focused on bringing depth and realism to characters (and rendering them within the logic and fantasy of their worlds), what we’re most excited about is how developers will use this breakthrough technology in ways that we have yet to imagine,” Inworld AI CEO Ilya Gelfenbeyn explained in the announcement. “AI has long been an integral part of game development, with applications ranging from enemy AI to procedural generation. The emergence of large language models and generative AI has unlocked new opportunities for storytelling and character engagement within games.”
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