Joining Valve's Gabe Newell at the altar of AI, Ubisoft CEO says the controversial tech will be "as big a revolution for our industry as the shift to 3D"

You don't have to look very hard to find a gaming executive who's just taken a big hit of generative AI and is ready to preach its benefits to the masses, but not all AI sermons are created equal. Some folks are, at least notionally, cooler on the tech's role and impact (and, of course, plenty of other people oppose all or many applications of it). Then you have folks like Valve billionaire Gabe Newell, who's called AI and machine learning systems a "cheat code" technological transition comparable to the pre- and post-internet era. Newell's comments came to mind as I listened to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, who we can add to the list of AI enthusiasts since he expects gen AI to be "as big a revolution for our industry as the shift to 3D."

Guillemot discussed gen AI in the company's latest earnings call, which was abruptly delayed from its usual timing for unclear reasons. Not unrelatedly, Ubisoft says Tencent's $1.3 billion investment in its new Assassin's Creed shepherd Vantage Studios is "imminent."

On the topic of "innovation," Guillemot begins by assuring investors "we are making great strides in applying gen AI to high-value use cases that bring tangible benefits to our players and teams. It's as big a revolution for our industry as the shift to 3D, and we have everything to lead on this front.

"On the player experience side, we are continuing to make progress on groundbreaking, player-facing generative AI applications," he adds, "building on our new NPC announcements in 2024."

Guillemot seems to be alluding to a presentation on generative AI-powered NPCs from March 2024, in which Ubisoft showed off – in essence – a chatbot with a character model. But the whole point of the initiative was to take these dynamic NPCs beyond the abilities of a mere chatbot to enable reactive, convincing interactions while keeping actual writers at the wheel in some capacity. The results were a little odd, particularly when Ubisoft reached the point of giving each character a "soul" and reprogramming one character who ended up too "flirtatious and seductive."

"The model's task becomes: I must impersonate this character," data scientist Mélanie Lopez Malet said at the time. "It is really important to us that it behaves like the character Virginie created. So, while we're talking to it, we ask ourselves: 'Is this Lisa? Would Lisa say this?' and if the answer is no, we need to go back and find out what happened within the model to make it stray from the vision Virginie had."

At the time, Project NEO NPC was still very early in development. As of Ubisoft's latest earnings call, Guillemot says, "We've already advanced from prototyping to player reality, and we are looking forward to sharing more before the end of the year." December 31 is a-coming, so I suppose we're due for a new NPC blog any day now.

Guillemot also confirms, "We now have teams in all our studios and offices embracing this new technology, and constantly exploring new use cases in programming, art, and overall game quality." This seemingly puts Ubisoft right alongside EA in company-wide AI integration, though the exact level of AI use is murky.

This comes as Arc Raiders faces backlash for its use of AI voices, in one of the first high-profile cases of a hugely successful game leaning on AI in a very obvious, widespread way. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has also caught flak for gen AI use, but in more isolated ways. Defending Arc Raiders, CCO and co-founder Stefan Strandberg of developer Embark Studios told us "we don't use generative AI in other domains across the game."

"Gen Z loves AI slop," says former Square Enix exec, which means that Arc Raiders' controversial AI usage is just "the tip of the spear."