NVIDIA, a leading technology company renowned for its graphics processing units (GPUs), has unveiled a groundbreaking innovation that is set to revolutionize the gaming industry. On May 28, 2023, NVIDIA introduced the NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for Games, a custom AI model foundry service aimed at infusing virtual characters with intelligence through generative artificial intelligence (AI).
ACE for Games enables developers of middleware, tools, and games to incorporate customized speech, conversation, and animation AI models into their software and games. This breakthrough technology harnesses the power of generative AI to enhance the interactivity and immersion players experience when interacting with non-playable characters (NPCs).
John Spitzer, Vice President of Developer and Performance Technology at NVIDIA, emphasized the potential of generative AI to transform the gaming landscape. He stated, "Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize the interactivity players can have with game characters and dramatically increase immersion in games." With NVIDIA's extensive expertise in AI and decades of collaboration with game developers, the company is at the forefront of leveraging generative AI in the gaming domain.
Building on the foundation of NVIDIA Omniverse™, ACE for Games offers optimized AI models for speech, conversation, and character animation. These models include NVIDIA NeMo™, which allows developers to build, customize, and deploy language models using proprietary data. NeMo models can be personalized with lore and character backstories and safeguarded against unproductive or unsafe conversations using NeMo Guardrails.
Additionally, ACE for Games incorporates NVIDIA Riva, which provides automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities, enabling real-time speech-based conversations. Another component, NVIDIA Omniverse Audio2Face™, enables developers to create expressive facial animations that synchronize with speech tracks. This feature includes Omniverse connectors for Unreal Engine 5, allowing seamless integration of facial animation into MetaHuman characters.
ACE for Games offers flexibility to developers, who can either integrate the complete solution or choose specific components as per their requirements.
To showcase the capabilities of ACE for Games, NVIDIA collaborated with Convai, an NVIDIA Inception startup focused on cutting-edge conversational AI for virtual game worlds. Convai integrated ACE modules into its real-time avatar platform, resulting in an impressive demo called Kairos. In the demo, players interact with Jin, an NPC who manages a ramen shop. Jin's responses to natural language queries are realistic and consistent with the narrative backstory, thanks to the power of generative AI.
Purnendu Mukherjee, Founder and CEO at Convai, highlighted the significance of NVIDIA ACE for Games in making AI-driven NPCs accessible to a wide range of developers. He noted, "With NVIDIA ACE for Games, Convai's tools can achieve the latency and quality needed to make AI non-playable characters available to nearly every developer in a cost-efficient way."
ACE for Games allows developers to deploy their NVIDIA ACE for Gaming models locally or in the cloud, leveraging the optimized neural networks for real-time inferencing. These models are carefully designed to prioritize latency, ensuring immersive and responsive interactions in games.
Already, game developers and startups have started leveraging NVIDIA's generative AI technologies in their workflows. GSC Game World, a prominent European game developer, has adopted Audio2Face in its highly anticipated game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl. Fallen Leaf, an indie game developer, is using Audio2Face for character facial animation in their sci-fi thriller, Fort Solis, set on Mars. Charisma.ai, a company specializing in virtual characters powered by AI, relies on Audio2Face to drive animation in its conversation engine.
The unveiling of NVIDIA ACE for Games represents a significant step forward in transforming the gaming experience. By infusing virtual characters with intelligence and natural language capabilities, developers can
Leave a Reply