After Ubisoft’s new AI-based writing assistant encountered backlash online, a former developer said it’s not as bad as it first appears.
Earlier this week, Ubisoft introduced its “Ubisoft Ghostwriter” tool, an AI-powered program that claims to help writers by generating barks and other dialogue elements for NPCs. Reaction to the tool hasn’t been kind online, with many developers and actors calling Ubisoft and stating that the tool is something the writers just wouldn’t want to deal with.
However, former Ubisoft Watch Dogs Legion developer Liz England claimed that was not the case. England attended a talk at the ongoing Game Developers Conference titled Machine Learning Summit: Natural Language Generation for Game Writing where the tool was discussed in more detail and now claims it is the ” reference standard” for how to integrate the technology into game development.
My gamedev mutuals please, I love you, but I don’t like your immediate gut reactions to this. I attended this conference. It was fantastic. The benchmark for integrating this technology into your development, working directly with writers and using your own datasets. https://t.co/xK70G509tMMarch 21, 2023
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“It’s not ‘we’re going to replace writers with this technology’, it’s ‘writers tell us what they want with this technology’. Reading your takes is exhausting,” England added on Twitter. The former Ubisoft developer also claimed that the GDC conference was very adamant that it was a tool “for writers, created/programmed by writers”, when answering questions about the online tool.
In short, the Ubisoft Ghostwriter tool is not designed to generate complete scripts for writers. Instead, it’s meant to generate “barks,” a bit of boilerplate dialogue for NPCs and other characters to use at certain points in the game. Do you remember all the times the guards and other characters told Geralt to get angry in The Witcher 3 while you were walking around? It’s barking.
Currently, the GDC conference is unfortunately not available online. However, be sure to keep an eye on the GDC YouTube channel (Opens in a new tab), where the event regularly uploads online discussions in the months following its first airing at the San Francisco conference, just in case he would finally show up. Ubisoft’s new tool is certainly not popular right now, but it has its defenders.
Take a look at our new games 2023 guide to take a look at all the games coming out for the rest of the year.