Justin Sousa, Head of Developer Community at Roblox, presents at the Roblox Developer Conference on August 10, 2019 in Burlingame, California.
Roblox is exploring software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for creating and modifying in-game items. The tool enables Roblox players to design buildings, landscapes, avatars, and interactive attributes by entering what they want in natural language rather than sophisticated code.
Take it from Roblox's chief technology officer Daniel Sturman. "Say I need a gleaming metal sword for an experience I'm creating; it should be really easy to create that," he said.
Sturman demonstrated a brand-new tool for the game Roblox that produces the code required to make items and change how they appear or behave.
In Wired's experiment, altering a sports car's visual look was as simple as entering commands like "red pain, reflective metal finish" or "purple foil, crushed pattern, reflective" into a chat box.
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Plan for Generative AI
Generative AI is a relatively new field that has attracted much interest and funding in the last year by proving that computers can develop ostensibly logical text and visually impressive graphics in response to a brief text cue. The technology is at work in the popular chatbot OpenAI's ChatGPT and is based on AI models trained with large amounts of data. This data may be found in the form of text or pictures scraped from the web.
Companies may learn from Roblox's revelation and use its code-writing skills to develop their own generative AI products for consumers who are not necessarily skilled programmers.
For Roblox, where one person or a small group may create many games, this method shows potential, according to Sturman. He added, "We have everything on our platform, from studios down to 12-year-olds who have had an incredible idea come out of a summer camp."
Roblox claims its code-generating AI draws on both its own tech and external capabilities, but it does not specify which. The company's AI is currently being trained only on free-to-use gaming data.
Sturman stated Roblox would proceed cautiously in the hopes that its users will be okay with their creations being used as input for generative AI systems.
In addition to creating new material, generative AI may also alter how games are played.
In May 2022, Microsoft showed how to manipulate Minecraft characters using a code-writing AI that accessed the game's API. This is similar to Roblox, but it incorporates AI code to revolutionize not just game development but gaming.
Expert Analysis
Associate professor at New York University working on AI and video games, Julian Togelius, predicted that generative AI will radically revolutionize game production but warns that this won't happen fast.
Togelius suggested the firm Roblox as a suitable place to test the technology since its users are also producers. Yet, he argued, a fundamental rethinking of game creation and design will be necessary as AI is more integrated into games.
However, Georgia Tech professor Mark Riedl has a different belief. He claimed that generative AI might generate surprising and troublesome online search results and possibly misbehave games.
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