Days ago, Rockstar Games confirmed that the trailer for GTA 6 will drop in December – and that announcement alone broke social platforms worldwide. Let me reiterate: the trailer announcement generated hundreds of millions of impressions on social media. Imagine how the traffic will look when the actual trailer drops in December.
Recently, Take-Two’s CEO (the parent company of Rockstar Games) spoke about generative AI in gaming, stressing that one key area of improvement could be non-player characters (NPCs). He suggested that ‘everyone’ is working on it, attempting to make NPCs much more interesting for the player to interact with.
Will GTA 6 Have AI-Powered NPCs?
It’s not yet known if GTA 6 will have any generative AI woven into it, as, despite all the leaks that took place last year, nothing has yet surfaced around any AI-based integrations. In an interview with Inverse, Strauss Zelnick, Take Two’s CEO, spoke about tweaking NPC characters and making them more immersive through the use of generative AI:
Everyone’s working on that. You’re a playable character, you’re interacting with the non-playable character. That interaction is currently scripted. And the non-playable characters are generally not very interesting. You could imagine all the NPCs becoming really interesting and fun.
We’ve already seen AI-driven NPCs surface in mods for popular games like TES: Skyrim, so it’s not that far a leap for top-tier developers to start featuring them from the get-go.
During the interview, Zelnick spoke about constantly remaining vigilant, not resting on the inherent potential for GTA 6 to be a monumental success just because it’s GTA 6. There are higher expectations for this game than any that came before it, and it’s hard to pick out a project that has ever been as highly anticipated as this one has. But that doesn’t mean it can’t fall short of those expectations.
Would you be put off if GTA 6 featured gen-AI-powered components?
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I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t incorporate AI to some extent! Don’t exchange writers for AI, but have the writers create hundreds of different personalities for the AI to use. Don’t use it as a cost cutting measure, use it to innovate.