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American tech company, Nvidia, has launched a new service called the Nvidia Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for Games. This service uses artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the behaviour of non-playable characters (NPCs) in video games, specifically by enhancing their natural language interactions.
The company explained on its website that ACE for Games will allow game developers to create and integrate personalised speech, conversation, and animation AI models into their products.
"Generative AI has the potential to revolutionise the interactivity players can have with game characters and dramatically increase immersion in games," said John Spitzer, vice president of developer and performance technology at Nvidia. "Building on our expertise in AI and decades of experience working with game developers, Nvidia is spearheading the use of generative AI in games."
We are ecstatic about the partnership and collaboration on this AI NPC demo with NVIDIA. "AI [NPCs] will be a big part of the future of video games" - Jensen Huang.
— Convai (@convaitech) May 29, 2023
We second you on that, Jensen. Convai will make it easier for game developers to achieve that.#nvidia… pic.twitter.com/VD0yzUkZ9W
ACE for Games is built on Nvidia Omniverse and provides optimised AI models for speech, conversation, and character animation. It includes Nvidia NeMo, which allows developers to create and customise language models while ensuring that conversations remain productive and safe. Nvidia Riva offers automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities, while Omniverse Audio2Face enables the generation of facial animations that sync with speech in real-time. Developers can choose to use the entire ACE for Games solution or select specific components based on their needs.
Nvidia partnered with Convai, an Nvidia Inception startup, to demonstrate the capabilities of ACE for Games. Convai integrated ACE modules into their real-time avatar platform and showcased realistic natural language interactions in a demo called Kairos. The demo, created using Unreal Engine 5, featured an NPC named Jin who responded realistically to queries and remained consistent with the game's storyline.
You can check out the demo in the video below.
Convai praised ACE for Games because it allowed their tools to achieve the necessary responsiveness and quality for AI-driven NPCs, while also being accessible and cost-efficient for developers. The neural networks powering ACE for Games have been optimised for different capabilities, with a focus on low latency to ensure immersive and responsive interactions in games.
Prominent game developers such as GSC Game World and indie developer Fallen Leaf have already embraced Nvidia's generative AI technologies. GSC Game World used Audio2Face in their game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl, while Fallen Leaf integrated it into Fort Solis for character facial animation. Charisma.ai, an AI toolkit for games, relies on Audio2Face for animation in their conversation engine.