Sony Developing “AI Generated Ghost Players” That Will Show On-Demand Puzzle Solutions, Beat Games For You
In somehow finding a way to take even more gameplay out of their wide library of ‘sad dad haunted house rides‘, a recently submitted Sony Interactive Entertainment patent has revealed that the PlayStation parent company is working to develop AI-controlled “ghost players” that can help show gamers how to get past difficult sections – and even beat the entire games for them.
Filed for review with the World Intellectual Property Organization in September 2024 and still being processed as of this article’s publication, said “AI Generated Ghost Player” system is the brainchild of by PlayStation senior product manager Bethany Tinklenberg and former VP of Finance and Accounting executive assistant Angela Webb, the pair of which described their digital tool as “providing ghost assistance to a player during gameplay of the game session.”
Offering further details in the patent’s abstract, Webb and Tinklenberg explained, “Broadly speaking, an Al model is trained using training footage of gameplay of the game to identify game scenarios and learn the interactivity necessary to progress in the game from the training footage.”
“During live gameplay, game state data is analyzed in order to identify a scenario occurring in the context of the gameplay. The scenario occurring can then be processed by the Al model and an assistance Al engine in order to provide a ghost character with control inputs for animation/control to guiding the player in relevant interactivity of the game.
“The relevant interactivity is for the context of the gameplay of the player, not just some prior gameplay of another player. The ghost character can therefore be controlled by the assistance Al engine during gameplay and provide the player with visual illustrations of how certain game scenarios are played in order for the player to be able to achieve progress in the game.”
In addition to just visual puzzle guides, the AI will also be capable of “completing one or more interactive tasks for the player character along the interactive path” – in other words, playing the game on their behalf.
Offering up a more concrete example of the AI’s functionality, the abstract presented a scenario where the computer-generated assistant could be “an animated representation of all-knowing Yoda from Star Wars.”
“Yoda can provide not just interactive moves to show how to play specific scenarios of the game, but can also provide verbal communication to the player character, which is listened to by the player. The ghost assistance therefore can be a combination of moves and actions an interactive action performed by the ghost character or can be in the form of verbal or gestures provided that can be viewable by the player in the game scene during a game session. If the verbal gesture is provided by the animated character Yoda, the visual representation of Yoda can be rendered in the form of Yoda speaking back to the character controlled by the player.”
Interestingly, Sony’s desired AI Ghost system appears to be an expansion on the PS5’s “Game Help” system, which currently allows for players to upload user-generated guides to specific portions of a given game.
Further, the relevant pant was filed just a month after Sony revealed that they had already begun training AIs on how to play video games, which they purported at the time was being done in service of improving their internal testing processes.
As noted above, the WIPO has yet to officially approve Sony’s ‘AI ghost character’ patent application – However, despite this current delay, it’s likely only a matter of time until some form of this system, from Sony or otherwise, makes its way into commercial video games.
