cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8882542
It’s a different story for the more established studios with an existing following and previous titles. Game Oracle found that the use of AI by these studios resulted in a significant 40% to 60% drop in sales.
That’s a huge difference. AI stigma seems to hit competent developers with a lot to lose the hardest, and I’m not sure that game studios are ready to accept it.
No, it’s completely different. Video games have always been driven by technical progress where some nerd invented a new rendering technique, implemented it and then convinced some artists and studio to use it and build a content pipeline. Or some new gameplay idea. There is always risk. It’s a highly technical “hit business” where 1 hit pays for the development of 10 misses. It’s technical nerds or artists driving the risk and businessmen managing it.
What we’re seeing with too early AI adoption is just nonsense rot economy. It’s business people driving the risk to reduce costs and get bonuses for short term profit. And they are following the business speak of the AI gurus because they invested billions into marketing for business dumbos. They are not testing if any of this works to in real business use, they are just firing people out of blind faith. They are not waiting and testing what comes around the corner like I’m suggesting, they are already firing people and investing without testing.
And you can test it to see if it works. See Skyrim NPCs with AI and Skyrim remastered by AI.
So no it’s not the same as what is driving the current bubble lol.
Anyway, that’s my opinion on the potential for AI in games. I don’t think there is any need to talk any further if you don’t believe that understanding and responding to complex text requires some basic level of reasoning and intelligence. If that were so there would be no problem with dead internet or AI bot comments. It’s doublethink.
The first video in the search results in the first link here has “it got weird fast” in the title and NPCs are breaking the third wall and responding strangely to things in general. (The lady at the orphanage mentioned the player “looking through a flickering screen.” I didn’t watch much further than that.)
The second is likely heavily curated and variables very strictly controlled. The characters are perfectly centered in frame and standing mostly still aside from idle animations. The landscapes are… well, they’re inherently still life. There’s no actual gameplay showcased, and there’s no indication from the video just how many of the video creator’s attempts had major issues like too many fingers or were scrapped in favor of the ones that turned out better. The art style switches strangely between characters, with, for instance, the first one looking much more photographic and the second mimicking more what you’d get from a better-quality 3D render. And many of the characters feel very uncanny valley. (The third one, for instance. I haven’t watched that video much further than that either.)
So, yeah, if those videos are “testing it to see if it works”, the answer is a resounding “no”. There’s nothing workable there, and no indication LLMs and Stable Diffusion are a step in the right direction, despite what Nvidia might tell you.
I mean, do you watch those videos and think to yourself “this is it – this is the destination – we’ve done it”?
I mean, there’s no there there, and no reason to think there ever will be beyond the fact that humans seem pretty intent on developing AGI. Clearly what AI can do now isn’t any kind of boon. So what’s keeping people high on hype if not empty hopes for a breakthrough in the near future?
That’s the opposite of what I said. The kind of real-time dynamic responding to things you’re talking about requires reasoning and intelligence, but LLMs possess neither.
Look, it’s an objective fact that people have a hard time distinguishing AI generated video from real video. So your whole argument that “this looks horrendous and nobody could ever like it” is just incorrect. Pointing to technical problems doesn’t change the fact that this could move video games towards photorealism especially while animated. It might not work out, but you’re saying nothing that precludes it.
You clearly hate AI and hate anyone who likes anything about it. But that blinds you to reality.
Not without a lot of curation.
I never said that. What I meant by the “do you really think this is the destination” comment is how can you look at a very curated collection of AI-generated video snippets and extrapolate from that that the Stable Diffusion (or whatever) model they used can be just unceremoniously dropped into a game engine without tons of random hallucinations like turning random wood grain in a fence into a full-ass hallucinated person or dog or steak dinner or whatever. And without making one character look drastically different now than they did the last time you visited them 20 minutes prior. (You’ve seen videos of beauty filter fails, haven’t you?) Let alone extra fingers and garbled text and accidental body horror and stuff.
If you generate a bunch of stuff, throw away the stuff that doesn’t look right (a.k.a. “curate”), and carefully edit the remainder into a video, yeah, you can get some pretty decent-looking results. But that’s not how games work, unless you’re just talking about pre-rendered cutscenes.
This can’t. Not without something we have yet to invent. And thinking that whatever may some day exist that can is in any way related to the “this” that you refer to is speculation at best.
I’m not saying photorealistic video games won’t happen. I’m saying that the companies forcing it on gamers are knowingly (or at least uncaringly) pulling a massive grift marketing what’s available today as the thing that will fill the promise of perfect photorealistic video games when nothing like that exists today and they have no reason to think it will any time soon.
“AI” can mean a lot of things. I took a course in college in 2005 called “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence”. And in that class, they introduced me to the A* algorithm. (When you do an escort mission in Skyrim and an NPC follows you, the code that determines how the NPC should traverse the distance between the two of you in order to remain in proximity to you – accounting for terrain features, circumventing obstacles, etc – is almost definitely the A* algorithm or some minor variation of it.) I can say I’m fully down with the A* algorithm and have nothing against it. I’ve had occasion to play chess against chess engines several times. 10/10 would play again.
As far as LLMs, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E are concerned, guilty as charged. And the way the industry conflates all of “AI” as if it’s one thing and not a whole bunch of different things (touting advancements in drug research as some kind of proof that their completely unrelated LLM is competent or whatever, for instance).
I mean, I think you’re pretty self-deluded, but not any more so than you think the same of me (as your “that blinds you to reality” states pretty plainly).
Beyond that, the whole world seems to be conspiring to make Generative AI not optional. Want to opt out? Fuck you, your search engine just spats slop on your screen now and some of your favorite content creators on YouTube are slathering it all over their videos now, and your phone and your computer and your browser just updated and now nag you constantly to use AI summaries and stuff. You also have to smile and be diplomatic about it at work because the CTO made a deal with Microsoft to push Copilot on you constantly. Plus, the communities that you’ve enjoyed previously are suddenly inundated by Generative AI fanboys filling your feed with shit.
And I have to imagine it would be hard for someone who thinks Generative AI is “a good thing actually” to really grasp just how fucking intrusive it is to be force-fed that so constantly. It has a way of turning a mild dislike into seething hatred. (Even if Generative AI was innocuous, the Green Eggs and Ham factor huge. At least that guy only had to deal with one Sam-I-Am.)