Ubisoft shows AI tool that helps script writers write NPC dialogues

Ubisoft introduces Ghostwriter, a machine learning tool intended to help authors write the dialogue sentences and statements of non-player characters. The model should help them to produce a draft version more quickly, leaving more time for other tasks.

This tool is mainly intended to help writers with so-called barks. These are the sentences and sounds that NPCs produce when players, for example, walk by or speak to them directly. Ghostwriter can produce a first draft of these barks, with the aim of creating variations on a piece of dialogue. This is a repetitive task that the tool should make less time consuming. According to Game Developer the tool will mainly be used for large groups of NPCs who are talking, where the player catches bits of dialogue. Ghostwriter was developed by Ubisoft La Forge, an R&D arm of Ubisoft responsible for developing artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.

Writers can insert a character and a variable line of dialogue into Ghostwriter, including an event or situation the character experiences. Ghostwriter can then generate new versions of the sentence, taking into account, for example, the style of language use. The writers select the sentences to be used and edit them as necessary before recording. The model learns from every choice for a specific sentence and every adjustment that is made, so the tool should improve with use.

There is criticism of the use of tools such as Ghostwriter. Sam Winkler, author at Gearbox, say that barks, ambient dialogue and descriptive writing are often the first billable tasks for authors when they start their job. He also states that using such tools does not save time at all. Edd Coates of Radical Forge stilt that the use of these tools will increasingly become a matter of a sliding scale, where it will not be limited to supporting authors, and that increasingly aggressive forms of AI will be deployed. According to him, such work could have provided a job for an aspiring writer.