A newAIplatform has been announced that aims to generate worlds for digital communities. Itclaims to function like ChatGPT, where users can enter prompts that the AI will seek to visualize.Applications and tools powered by artificial intelligencehave soared in popularity in recent months. ChatGPT’s launch late last year invited a never-ending tsunami of others wishing to replicate its success, such as Google’s Bard. But as their use has expanded exponentially, so have the fears surrounding what AI could lead to. Artists were some of the first to vocally call out that AI is a threat to their very livelihood – the current tools do not create as humans do, but rather copy from existing work and mimic whatever the user has prompted it with. Unregulated use of AI in the art industry would present a copyright and intellectual property nightmare that existing laws do not properly cover. Of course, it was only a matter of time before it reached video games.RELATED:Honkai: Star Rail Dev Reveals How It Used AI to Help Make the GameLovelace Studio posted an announcement video to its Twitter account that revealed Nyric, an in-development AI platform that can “build the world of your dreams in seconds.” The video opens with the sentence “/create winter alien forest” being typed, before instantly cutting to what viewers are led to believe the AI subsequently generated. Generic and low-resolution textures ostensibly make up the rest of the presentation,showcasing a few Unreal Engine toolsthat are employed.
Paul Tassi, a Forbes video games and television writer, questioned the authenticity of a projectaiming to aid triple-A game developmentfrom a Twitter account with barely a few hundred followers and only a couple of tweets. The account was created in January 2021, which suggests it was previously unused, or its history was recently wiped. Developers replying to the video have pointed out issues similar to those faced by artists – whatever the AI generates would not be original nor handcrafted, and players will almost certainly be able to tell. Even if they could not, the practice would still be ethically troubling.
But beyond the philosophical debates surrounding AI, Lovelace’s Nyric raises eyebrows after just a cursory glance. The demonstration itself never shows the generative functions in action without cutting and what it does show would not be acceptable for anything claiming to be triple-A. Furthermore, the messaging on Lovelace’s Twitter and its website are inconsistent, with the latter boldly stating on the homepage that theplatform is intended for VR. There is no mention of this in any tweets published by the company at the time of writing. Additionally, the studio and project seem tied to Web 3.0, a moniker that often refers to technologies such as cryptocurrency and NFTs. Given how rife Web 3.0 often is with scams, anything remotely associated with it is worthy of skepticism.
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