It's no secret that many game studios are turning to generative AI and machine learning in an effort to make their games more appealing to the masses. Just recently, we've seen both Krafton and EA make drastic pivots into AI workflows , Take-Two's CEO comment on AI-voiced NPCs , and the creator of PUBG publish a game with a bespoke world-generating AI . Now, Ubisoft is looking to expand on an AI system it previously teased that it claims can allow for more useful, dynamic AI-powered teammates in shooter and other co-op games.

Ubisoft Teammates is described as an "experimental AI gaming project," that uses an AI natural language and voice recognition model and assistant to augment gameplay and the gaming user experience in a number of ways using voice commands. The use-case examples provided by Ubisoft include marking enemies, adjusting in-game options without needing to open a menu, providing story details, and pausing the game. Supposedly, in the experimental testing, the AI model was able to understand context cues within the player's environment and adjust its output accordingly. The same project gave rise to two additional voice models, which Ubisoft has seemingly trained specifically to serve as context-aware and player-controlled NPCs. Much like the aforementioned voice assistant, which Ubisoft has named Jaspar, the two AI NPCs, Pablo and Sofia, respond to voice commands and can act in a semi-autonomous fashion according to those commands and their surroundings. According to Ubisoft's Director of Gameplay GenAI, Xavier Manzanares, the voice assistant proved particularly helpful to players who "got lost or weren't sure what to do,"