One of PlayStation’s best-loved characters gets creepy GenAI overhaul

Sony is experimenting with generating AI versions of at least one of its most iconic PlayStation characters, sparking plenty of concern in the process.

An internal video leaked to the media shows Aloy, the unmistakable red-headed heroine from Horizon: Forbidden West – one of the best PS5 games – responding by voice to prompts from PlayStation director of software engineering, Sharwin Raghoebardajal.

The video was first reported by The Verge and has now been taken down due to a copyright claim. However, an animated gif of the upload remains. The site reports Raghoebardajal saying the tech is for internal demonstration purposes only.

It doesn’t look very good as you’d expect. The AI character appears to be over enunciating the words and it looks entirely unnatural. It’s all made possible via OpenAI’s whisper speech-to-text tech, while the conversational and decision-making comes via GPT-4 and Llama 3. Sony’s own internal model called the Emotional Voice Synthesis system is also involved.

“This is just a glimpse of what is possible,” says Raghoebardajal, but the engineer doesn’t offer any insight into whether Sony is actively looking to use the tech to develop future PlayStation games. However, it certainly raises the spectre that Sony is investigating the possibility of allowing gamers to directly interact with AI generated characters in the future.

Given game developers and voice actors already have great cause for concern over the creeping influence of AI in the creation of video games, seeing Aloy in action is sure to send shivers up the spines of those making their livelihoods in this manner.

Quelle Surprise!

You’d be far more surprised if Sony wasn’t working on this kind of technology, right? Everybody else is and there’s no way Sony is going to be left behind whether it is morally on board with generative AI characters or not.

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