Ubisoft Is Using AI to Write Dialogue for Video Game Characters

Ubisoft this week unveiled its Ghostwriter AI(Opens in a new window), which the video game publisher/developer describers as a tool that “effectively generates first drafts of barks.”

By barks, Ubisoft is referring to phrases and sounds a non-player character (NPC) utters during triggered events in a game. This could be enemy dialogue during combat, NPCs talking to each other, general crowd background chatter, or an NPC casually addressing the player as they pass by.

Scriptwriters at Ubisoft can pass a character along with the type of interactions and utterances required to Ghostwriter. The AI then generates variations for each interaction and utterance which is then handed back to the scriptwriters for selection and polishing. Ghostwriter knows which variation of each piece of dialogue the scriptwriters pick and uses that information to learn and become “more effective and accurate” when generating dialogue in the future.

By creating these first draft versions, Ghostwriter allows scriptwriters more time to be creative and focus on other areas such as the main plot progression of the game, or the detailed dialogue required for longer conversations held between characters in cutscenes.

The Ghostwriter AI was created by Ben Swanson after he joined Ubisoft back in 2021 as an R&D Scientist at La Forge Montreal. La Forge is Ubisoft’s name for collaborations between academic research and video games production. It allows Ubisoft’s assets and data to be used by university researchers to innovate and have projects like this AI script writer appear.

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