Xbox has announced today that it has entered into a partnership with the company "Inworld AI" in an attempt to "empower game creators with the potential of generative AI" in dialogue, story and quest design.
Inworld describes itself as the "leading Character Engine for AI NPCs", and Microsoft clearly thinks that this partnership can be hugely beneficial for game creators in the future - here's a bit of what their multi-platform toolset will provide:
Together, we aim to deliver an accessible, responsibly designed multi-platform AI toolset to assist and empower creators in dialogue, story & quest design. The toolset will include:
- An AI design copilot that assists and empowers game designers to explore more creative ideas, turning prompts into detailed scripts, dialogue trees, quests and more.
- An AI character runtime engine that can be integrated into the game client, enabling entirely new narratives with dynamically-generated stories, quests, and dialogue for players to experience.
Microsoft says that in addition to Inworld's expertise, it will also be harnessing its own "cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions" such as the Azure OpenAI Service in order to create this toolset, and the company's approach to AI is based on "meaningful innovation, empowering people and organisations, and responsibility".
"We want to help make it easier for developers to realize their visions, try new things, push the boundaries of gaming today and experiment to improve gameplay, player connection and more. We will collaborate and innovate with game creators inside Xbox studios as well as third-party studios as we develop the tools that meet their needs and inspire new possibilities for future games."
This new partnership with Inworld is a multi-year deal, and it's described by Team Xbox as "an important step in our journey to empower game developers". Obviously it's early days right now, but it'll be interesting to see just how meaningful and prominent this partnership proves to be in the coming months and years.