Not for replacing artists, but to make stuff that is literally impossible without generative AI such as NPCs that can converse naturally and not with a regular dialogue tree. Think this Skyrim mod, for example.
I am not sure anyone has done that well yet, it is hard to put constraints on the AI no matter how you wrap it. However, I think it is going to be amazing when it becomes easier to wrap.
However I am a big AI fan, so would love to see more of it in games. I am not sure though how it would be anything more than a nice albeit temporary distraction from the actual game. Having a prolonged chit chat with the shopkeeper would soon get boring.
For instance, (I know it is not actually AI) playing the computer chess gets very dull after a while. You know full well if you set it a bit higher in difficulty it would destroy you, Magnus Carlson and any other grandmaster at any time. So not fun in that example.
I think that AI is an amazing tool and it can be used for good and bad. I don’t believe it will replace professional artists (at least in the short term).
As of today, I do not consider AI consistent enough to produce assets for games. With the same prompt, you get different outputs every time, so how are you going to get different versions of the same character/item/whatever with AI?
Even if this aspect improves, I still consider artists fundamental. Professional artists work for professional projects. Therefore, professional criteria is needed to tell wheter the art you are using really fits the game, regardless of who made it (AI or humans). Even if you create models, sprites or full assets for a game with AI, you need to know if it really conveys what you want to convey, if it is consistent across the levels/characters, etc. However, I think that artists could use AI to be more productive, to aim for better art or something like this, but I don’t see it as a replacement.
Nonetheless, AI is going to help a lot of begginers get started, and that’s why I like it. Begginers don’t even spend money on professional artists because they are still learing and usually can’t even make graphics, so they rely on free assets. In those scenarios, using AI is not actually replacing anyone, but helping getting the job done, which can lead to better and faster results for novice projects, granting better experiences for anyone starting in the game making world.
In my experience, generative AI NPCs are a gimmick at best - even with a very advanced model, at the end of the day LLMs are just an overcomplicated version of a predictive keyboard, so any conversations that are held are gonna be more fluff and noise than real content. Plus, since they’re just a predictive model, you run the risk of NPCs outputting phrases that look like information about the game or world but are completely meaningless or misleading.
If you want to let players hold extended, engaging discussions with NPCs, the only real way to do it is the way games like Disco Elysium, Baldur’s Gate 3, or visual novels do it - put in the hours writing big, extended, engaging dialogue trees for the player to go through as the character they play.
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The r/aigamedev subreddit specializes in this subject, so you might take a look there. I have seen a godot plugin enabling an API for AI communication. Some day I’d like to consider that for making item definitions, not sprites.
Chatting with AI npc’s could be interesting but it depends on the setting and immersion.