About a week ago, someone leaked an internal video from Sony’s PlayStation Group showing an AI version of the main character Aloy from the hit title Horizon Forbidden West. Not an AI-enhanced or AI-infused motion capture of the actress, but a fully AI-generated clip said to be part of a prototype stage experiment by the studio.
The clip was quickly removed for copyright violation so I can’t share it with you, but it showed the character conversing with the player using voice prompts and is in no way anything that’s ready for use. The narrator makes this very clear and says it’s simply a prototype to demo the new tech to Sony execs.
I’ll freely admit it took me a bit to understand why I cared to give it more than a passing glance.
I didn’t think much of it until I saw that Ashly Burch, the actor who plays Aloy in the blockbuster game, took to Instagram and TikTok to talk about it all. She makes some very good points about how this type of technology will affect the future of game development, especially since the SAG is on strike over the use of AI in the video game industry right now.
If any of that seems interesting to you, you should definitely check out what Burch has to say.
@ashly.burch let us speak on AI aloy
♬ original sound – Ashly Burch
Everyone has a moment when they realize what’s been bothering them, that thing they haven’t been able to put a finger on. I play PC games, so this is sort of my moment.
You may love it or loathe it, but a large part of a AAA mega-million-dollar video game is storytelling. AI can’t tell a story unless a person tells it what to say. AI has no experience to draw from. It has no original thoughts or ideas. It can’t like or dislike something, so it can’t convey that message to us. AI is a stupid robot programmed to say smart things by smart people. Nothing more.
Burch’s fears that this will negatively affect the game industry are valid for the actors and writers who work hard to create the things we love. I’m not one of them. I’m just a person who buys and plays said games. I have my own thoughts from that perspective.
AI is here and it’s not going away. Consumer-facing gimmicks will soon wear thin and be less in our faces, but the technology is here to stay. AI will be able to take your job even though it will never be very good at doing it. AI can write code but it can’t write good, original code. AI can write articles like this one, but it will never have an opinion. AI can never replace the human factor.
Sometimes, we want that human factor. I’m more about the action when I play a game than the story, but I want to hear from actors who can put feelings into their work, not from a robot. I think never is a strong word, but I can’t see AI doing that unless someone invents something impossible.
AI will be there to help you with your battery life or try to find what you’re searching for, and it will do a great job. Eventually. It has a long way to go before it can tell me how it feels.