Ubisoft has revealed that it has created an AI-powered tool that was developed internally to ‘support scriptwriters’ in the creation of ‘NPC barks’, a phrase used to describe the audio interactions an NPC has when engaging with a player character.
Created by the teams at Ubisoft La Forge, the tool – Ubisoft Ghostwriter – is expected to reduce strain on development teams by lifting the weight of laborious, manual tasks – a perfectly acceptable goal for any technical team. It has been stressed that this tool isn’t designed to replace writers entirely but to augment their role and make processes more streamlined.
Has Ubisoft Made a Positive Change?
In a showcase that lasted little more than a minute, Ubisoft revealed Ubisoft Ghostwriter and – in perfect transparency – explained exactly how it works and why it’s necessary:
As the video shows, there’s still human input required to make sure that the AI-generated dialogue makes sense and is relevant, so it’s not immediately obvious how much time will be saved versus how much time it took to develop the tool.
In the hours after this showcase was published, sentiments began flooding in under the clip, in YouTube’s comment section – and very few of them echoed notes of positivity.
The lengths people will go to to not pay writers is astonishing
The Duckman
what a wonderful way to make your game worlds feel robotic and soulless
Boo
Wow! A tool to help make Ubisoft writing even worse than it already is! What an incredible innovation.
Ashtray Comms LLC
Imagine publicly announcing that your studio has become lazy and just fired 75% of their writing teams.
Sourcery Wizard
It’s no big secret that Ubisoft has found itself in hot water (again) over the last few months. Following the cancellation of several projects and the announcement that it’ll close major offices, the firm is still making great strides in efforts to stay afloat.
This could be the latest in a long line of actions designed to reduce operating costs and promote profitability, but the general consensus is that introducing AI tooling into the development process is a bad one – at least, according to users commenting on YouTube.
For more Insider Gaming news, check out our coverage of the leak that may have revealed Spider-Man 2’s launch window.
