Ubisoft developed Ghostwriter, which is an AI writer tool that will specialize in writing dialogue for NPCs. The reason the developer provided for the development is a goal to lessen work for the writing staff, as they will no longer have to manually come up with lines for NPCs in a video game. There is also a video introducing how Ghostwriter will work. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]
Similar to the MTPE (machine translation post-editing) process, there will still be a human behind the scenes. At this point in time, Ubisoft does not seem to plan on completely replacing scriptwriters with Ghostwriter when it comes to NPC dialogue in games. You can input information such as the NPC’s situation and background, and then Ghostwriter will create several lines. The scriptwriter team will then use the lines as drafts and then edit them to create the NPC’s dialog.
You can check out the Ghostwriter introduction video here:
As you can see from the above video, the scriptwriter will input a situation and then decide how the character will say the line. The situation in the example is the famous “arrow in the knee” line from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
AI is a controversial technology, as in copyright and creativity issues regarding AI art. However, Ubisoft repeatedly mentioned that it will only use Ghostwriter for NPC “barks” and as a way to alleviate the workload of its scriptwriters. NPC barks are the random lines you get when you walk past NPCs in the field. Writers might also use it for shorter lines that non-essential NPCs say when you talk to them. So far, it seems there are no plans to fully replace video game writers with this program.
Ghostwriter is an AI tool for scriptwriters that Ubisoft will use in-house for its games.
