Enter Agent Smith

The unnerving future of Al-fuelled video games

- ZACHARY SMALL

It sounds like a thought experiment conjured by René Descartes for the 21st century.

The citizens of a simulated city inside a video game based on The Matrix franchise were being awakened to a grim reality. Everything was fake, a player told them through a microphone, and they were simply lines of code meant to embellish a virtual world. Empowered by generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, the characters responded in panicked disbelief.

"What does that mean," said one woman in a grey sweater. "Am I real or not?"

The unnerving demo, released two years ago by an Australian tech company named Replica Studios, showed both the potential power and the consequences of enhancing gameplay with artificial intelligence. The risk goes far beyond unsettling scenes inside a virtual world. As video game studios become more comfortable with outsourcing the jobs of voice actors, writers and others to artificial intelligence, what will become of the industry?

At the pace the technology is improving, large tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon are counting on their Al programs to revolutionise how games are made within the next few years.

"Everybody is trying to race towards AGI," said tech founder Kylan Gibbs, using an acronym for artificial generalised intelligence, which describes the turning point at which computers have the same cognitive abilities as humans. "There's this belief that once you do, you'll basically monopolise all other industries."

In the earliest months after the rollout of ChatGPT in 2022, the conversation about artificial intelligence’s role in gaming was largely about how it could help studios quickly generate concept art or write basic dialogue.

Its applications have accelerated quickly. This spring at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, thousands of eager professionals looking for employment opportunities were greeted with an eerie glimpse into the future of video games.