There was quite a bit of talk yesterday regarding Ubisoft’s new AI tool, Ghostwriter. This tool was unveiled and showcased as a means for developers to allow AI to craft some of the dialogue lines you might hear in video games. Of course, when news broke, there was plenty of pushback online. The fear was that Ubisoft was making a tool that would eliminate creative writers from their work. But that’s not the goal for Ubisoft, and recently Game Developer managed to sit in on a talk by Ubisoft’s La Forge researcher, Ben Swanson. During this, Ben Swanson showcased more information about what the tool is used for and how it helps writers.
Overall, Ben Swanson highlighted that Ghostwriter is not a tool that touches on lore or quest storylines. Actual writers still make the main points of a narrative and scripting. Nothing will change that, but with Ghostwriter, the unnecessary stress writers are put through for more mundane dialogue points are removed. With Ghostwriter, there’s no longer the need to think of small talk between NPCs or crowds. Instead, this tool will allow writers to note a line’s subject matter and tone. From there, the software will spit out some lines that the writer could use in the game, or they can reject them.
With writers passing on a dialogue line, Ghostwriter will continue to learn about what works and what doesn’t. That will further prompt the software to bring out more valuable lines to be used. Additionally, this is a tool that can further help expand on some of the lines NPCs might say to the protagonist or out loud in general. So if you’re tired of the same old phrase being used as you progress through the campaign, this should help change that.
AI has been a hot topic lately, and it’s always interesting to see just what ways this technology is being used. At the very least, while it might have seemed like Ghostwriter could have cost writers their jobs, it’s being advertised as nothing more than a new helpful tool. Less strain is being placed on writers to develop dialogue lines for NPCs. With that being the case, more focus can be put on quests and lore dialogue. That should give us even more thrilling narratives and even immersive crowd interactions to go through as future games make use of Ghostwriter.
