Unity and Convai have released a trailer for their AI demo. Neural Nexus Project, and as expected it looks and sounds like shit. Project Neural Nexus is said to be a proof-of-concept AI demo, also backed by Unity – you know, the company behind the similarly titled game engine that tried this force an installation fee that previously threatened to kill “smaller games” and their developers go back there last year.
Project Neural Nexus is a sci-fi game demo set in Neo City (I understand this isn’t a full game, but come on) where players wake up in a hotel after being hunted by the police and “killer robots.” . Soon after, the hotel is apparently infested by assassins and it’s up to you and your companion to fight your way out. The trailer shows a pretty generic cyberpunk setting, with basic features like Times Square-style billboards and neon signs everywhere. Even the character models look like they were ripped right out Cyberpunk 2077. They certainly tick boxes, but probably not the ones they were meant to tick.
Convai refers to the player’s AI companions as “intelligent NPCs,” which is funny considering how stupid they feel. It’s not that they don’t know words, it’s that they don’t know how to pronounce them. The video they released is full of it Flattest readings I’ve ever heard. At one point the player character simply demands to know “what the gangs are up to.” In the next scene, they ask my favorite line: “Hey, what’s that tree over there?” A robot, who ironically delivers the most spirited performance in the entire trailer, simply replies, “The tree is the hologram of Yggdrasil, the Norse Realm Tree .”
If the point of the demo was to prove that you can program a robot to say pretty much anything in the most boring way possible, then congratulations to everyone involved. If this is supposed to be a commercial for an AI capable of building advanced and self-aware worlds, then I’m sorry to report that this all sucks. It’s like no one in Neo City has ever heard of tone or pitch. For something billed as an exciting and cutting-edge cyberpunk experience, the player’s companion, Seraph, couldn’t sound less enthusiastic about having “fetched the submachine gun for you.”
Comes from just playing Cyberpunk 2077 For the first time a few months ago, the differences couldn’t be more drastic. As full of problems As it is, you couldn’t really blame Cyberpunk 2077 because it lacks personality or sense of style. The specificity of the writing in this game, thanks to colloquial terms like “choom” or “nova,” stood out so clearly. Real people’s rendition of the lines, particularly the performances by the female player characters (Cherami Leigh) and Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves), helped impress these lines on players. The only strange thing about Project Neural Nexus, and really most AI demos, is how far removed it is from reality.
Despite these common shortcomings, the gaming industry is relying on AI more than ever. Last year the first person shooter The final caused a huge stir and was quickly reversed after it was revealed that developer Embark Studio had used AI for the in-game announcer. CEOs responsible for some of the most influential developers like Square Enix have only doubled the use of AI in development, which is what the companies are accused of Using AI to scrape other people’s art seemingly every two weeks. Now it is The gaming industry continues to lose valuable workers that these companies should be properly valued and compensated to continue making high quality games that AI will simply never reproduce.
Correction: 03/18/2024 4:50 PM ET: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that NVIDIA played a role in the creation of the Sakura Rabbit demo. The demo was a collaboration between Unity and Convai. Kotaku regrets the mistake.
