Ubisoft’s game-scripting AI tool Ghostwriter, explained

Video game worlds are filled with “barks.” You may not know the name for the short, quick phrases that come from a game’s characters when they aren’t being chatty, but they’re always there. It’s your Modern Warfare: The Call of Duty teammate yelling “Grenade!” or Overwatch hero Junkrat’s giddy “Fire in the hole!” It’s Ellie in Last of Us shouting at Joel, “Watch out!” These lines are often triggered by certain situations — if you get hit by a bullet, land a headshot, or pass by a shopkeeper selling goods, for instance. These sorts of lines are easy to overlook when they’re good, but hard to ignore when they’re bad.

While barks are short and sometimes repetitive, writing them is an important job for video game developers; it’s some of the most frequent dialogue a player will hear. Sometimes they are even iconic! These NPC lines can be hundreds to thousands in a videogame. Ubisoft has unveiled an innovative tool that it claims can make writing barks easier for writers. Ubisoft describes the program, Ghostwriter, as an “in-house AI tool” to generate “first drafts of barks.” Ghostwriter creator Ben Swanson, an R&D scientist at Ubisoft La Forge, hosted a GDC 2023 talk Tuesday to talk about how the company is using it.

“Ghostwriter isn’t replacing the video game writer, but instead, alleviating one of the video game writer’s most laborious tasks: writing barks,” Ubisoft wrote in a blog post outlining the tool. “Ghostwriter effectively generates first drafts of barks — phrases or sounds made by NPCs during a triggered event — which gives scriptwriters more time to polish the narrative elsewhere.”

Swanson said he worked with Ubisoft’s writers to create a tool that would genuinely aid their work and create larger “bark trees” and more background dialogue. Writers can use the tool to generate lines for NPCs using a character’s motivations and other criteria. After the line is generated, the writer can either accept or reject it. That feedback helps the tool to learn. Swanson said Ubisoft writers most often use the tool to generate “paraphrased” barks — helpful when a writer must create multiple versions of a line, like “I’m reloading,” according to Game Developer’s in-depth overview of the talk.

Some game writers and developers are not eager to use this tool. There are arguments that AI won’t create lifelike, varied dialogue that can enrich a game world. AI tools could lead to a loss of jobs within an industry already in high competition. Others worry that AI will only create lines that are more profitable. Continue readingWriters can use AI. People are right to be skeptical, even when tech like this is made in good faith; the dazzle of new tools is alluring, and there’s nothing stopping corporations from using AI unethically.

There are also developers who want to know how the tools will fit into their development processes. AI tools may free developers from monotonous repetitive tasks, which could allow them to spend more time on creative projects. Some developers believe this would fit in with the existing structure for writing. benefit game workers.

Ubisoft’s tool will inevitably be part of the conversation that’s happening not only in the video game industry, but in tech as a whole. The ethics of AI programs such as DALL-E or Midjourney, which generate generative AI, was at the forefront of debates last year. These issues range from racism to art theft. Those issues are still contentious, but OpenAI’s ChatGPT app has moved to the forefront in the past few months. OpenAI’s most advanced AI model, GPT-4 was released. It is now easy to use through its ChatGPT chatbot application. This machine can produce code, and generate sentences that look human-like from vast amounts of data. This kind of tool is brand new and many people just now are starting to think about their legality and ethics.

Swanson, Ubisoft’s Ghostwriter creator, told GDC attendees to steer clear of programs like ChatGPT, according to Game Developer. Ghostwriter, he says, is a more flexible and controllable tool.

“If you’re trying to build these systems, keep lines of communication and talk to narrative designers and scriptwriters,” Swanson said, as quoted by Game Developer. “Make sure you’re not inventing a tool nobody needs.”