Why we’re building immersive AI characters for games and the metaverse
Our social nature
We’re a social species, spending a majority of our time each day interacting with others in some way. As our lives move increasingly online, it is only natural that our social interactions follow us there, from simple text messaging in Telegram to visiting each other’s virtual homes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The most fundamental perk we get from being with others is companionship. This can result from:
- engaging in activities together,
- pursuing shared goals,
- facing common challenges,
- offering or receiving help,
- and even just spending unstructured time in each other’s presence.
Companionship matters
Companionship fulfils us emotionally and gives us a sense of belonging. When times are tough, it offers connection and support, and can help us feel less lonely and isolated.
In the real world, companionship can come not only from people, but also from animals. In games, it can definitely be offered by other players, but hardly ever by AI characters. Today’s characters are generally not believable enough, leaving players with the feeling that their behavior is robotic, uncanny and scripted. Interacting with them breaks what Disney famously called “the illusion of life”, and is unable to create a sense of care and companionship.
At VIRTUAL BEINGS, we’re on a mission to bridge the uncanny valley for AI characters, to offer people the joy of owning and caring for them, and to populate the virtual world with believable life. Why? Because we are convinced that AI characters can advance human kindness, empathy and companionship along three complementary paths.
The first path: virtual pets
People can get companionship from virtual pets. If you’ve ever played a virtual pet game on your smartphone, you’ve probably encountered manipulative gameplay, bad animations, buggy interactions and invasive ads. We are convinced that AI characters can absolutely provide companionship if they are crafted to feel believable and authentic. Note that such characters don’t have to resemble real pet species to make players care — anything from a virtual toy robot to a unicorn can provide companionship! What matters is that the AIs behave in ways that lead players to buy into “the illusion of life”. That’s actually a high bar and requires new technological solutions in the field of artificial behavior. At VIRTUAL BEINGS, most of our R&D over the last 11 years has gone into KuteEngine™ (previously Rascal™), our flagship technology that makes AI characters believably alive and deeply interactive. More on that in future posts.
The second path: real pets
People already get companionship from real pets, and believable virtual pets can help them understand and connect more deeply with real ones. We’ve always viewed the relationship between real and virtual pets as one of complementarity, not one of competition or substitution. This is most obvious for people — including some of our founders — who are unable to own real pets because they are allergic, busy or limited by housing rules. For anyone else, virtual pets can enrich the experience of having real ones, educate about optimal pet care and training, and even offer comfort to people who have lost a beloved animal companion.
The third path: multiplayer games
AI characters can bring people together. A large amount of research shows that pet owners IRL are more social, healthier and even happier than people without pets. The simple fact of owning a pet often requires them to reach out to neighbours for help, it allows them to meet fellow owners on the street, and it even makes them more trustworthy and approachable by strangers. For these reasons, we see the potential of social games featuring believable pets as almost limitless. Such pets will serve as social facilitators and catalysts of friendship. They will strengthen bonds between friends and family that share custody over them. And they will bring empathy and companionship to the empty, lifeless spaces that people have come to associate with today’s metaverse.
The four ‘I’s of believable AI characters
What does it take to realize the mission of bringing people companionship by — and companionship facilitated by — AI characters? We’ve found that they need to satisfy four qualities.
- Immersiveness refers to the psychological state of being fully engaged and focused in an experience, without distractions. In order to create immersive AI characters in games, it is important to make them believable and deeply interactive, with a range of realistic emotions and behaviors that adhere to the laws of the virtual world they inhabit.
- Intersubjectivity is the state of understanding between individuals, achieved through shared perception and interaction. To create intersubjective AI characters, they must be able to understand and respond appropriately to their environment, express their understanding through natural and legible behavior, and interact with the player in a meaningful way.
- Individuality comprises the unique characteristics and traits that distinguish one individual from another. In the context of AI characters, individuality can be achieved through variations in art style, behavior, personality, and preferences, which can enable players to personalize and eventually own their characters, leading to stronger feelings of attachment and care.
- Interoperability of AI characters is about allowing players to use their unique AIs in a variety of different games and virtual worlds, and to communicate and connect with other players using them, even if they are using different devices. It also enables developers to create more efficient and composable virtual assets, and is often seen as a key requirement for transitioning from today’s segregated game-worlds to a shared metaverse.
Read more about our four ‘I’s: here
At VIRTUAL BEINGS, we have spent 11 years to develop KuteEngine™, the world’s first behavioral AI engine, to create AI characters that support the four “I”s. We are democratizing our tech to help developers of all sizes and to bring real AI companions to people. It’s time to bridge the uncanny valley and put real life into virtual worlds!
This article was written by Wendelin Reich, the CEO & CTO of Virtual Beings. He is a past fellow in psychology and AI at Stanford. He’s been passionate and dedicated to behavioral AI as well as gaming over 10+ years and created Virtual Beings’ core technology.
VIRTUAL BEINGS develops the world’s most advanced behavioral AI engine, with the mission to bridge the uncanny valley for AI characters, to offer people the joy of owning and caring for them, and to populate the metaverse with believable virtual life.
KuteEngine™, our flagship behavioral AI technology with 10+ years of R&D, creates AI characters that support the four “I”s: Immersiveness, Interactivity, Individuality and Interoperability. We are opening it up in order to democratize AI characters to developers of all sizes and to bring real AI companions to people. Sign up to KuteEngine™ Waitlist.
