appearance of AI NPCs It's felt like a looming threat for years now, as if developers can't wait to ditch the human writers and shift NPC conversations to generative AI models. At CES 2025, NVIDIA made it clear that the technology is just around the corner. PUBG Krafton developer, for example, plans to use NVIDIA ACE (Avatar Cloud Engine) to support AI companions who will help you and joke with you during matches. Krafton doesn't just stop there – they also use ACE in their life simulator. InZOI make characters smarter and generate objects.
While the use of generative AI in games seems almost inevitable since the medium has always experimented with new techniques to make enemies and NPCs smarter and more realistic, watching several NVIDIA ACE demos in a row made me really sick. It wasn't just smarter enemy AI – ACE can create entire conversations out of thin air, imitate voices and try to give NPCs a sense of personality. It also does the job locally on your PC equipped with NVIDIA RTX GPUs. But while it might all seem cool on paper, I hated almost every second I saw the AI NPCs in action.
TiGames' ZooPunk is a prime example: it uses NVIDIA ACE to generate dialogue, virtual voice, and lip sync for an NPC named Buck. But as you can see in the video above, Buck sounds like a stilted robot with a slight country accent. Whether he is supposed to have some kind of relationship with the main character, you can’t tell from the game.
I think my visceral distaste for NVIDIA's ACE-based AI comes down to this: there's just nothing attractive about it. No joy, no warmth, no humanity. Every character in ACE AI feels like a developer cutting corners in the worst possible way, as if you can see their contempt for the audience manifesting itself in a boring NPC. I'd rather scroll through some text on the screen, at least I wouldn't have to talk to supernatural robot voices.
During NVIDIA Editor's Day at CES, a media gathering to learn more about new RTX 5000 series GPUs and related technologies, I was also not impressed by the demonstration PUBG's AI ally. His answers sounded like something you might hear from a pre-recorded phone tree. The ally also failed to find a weapon when requested by the player, which could be a fatal mistake on a crowded map. In one moment, PUBG the companion also spent about 15 seconds attacking enemies while the demo player yelled at him to get into the car. What's the use of an AI assistant if it plays like a noob?
Dig around NVIDIA's YouTube channel and you'll find other disappointing examples of ACE, such as basic speech animation in an MMO. World of Jade Dynasty (above) and Alien: Rogue Invasion. I'm sure many developers would like to skip the grunt work of developing decent lip-sync technology or adopt someone else's, but in games like this, relying on AI just looks terrible.
To be clear, I don't think NVIDIA's AI efforts are pointless. I love seeing DLSS get better over the years, and I'm interested to see how DLSS 4's multi-frame generation can improve 4K and ray tracing performance in demanding games. The company's neural shader technology also seems attractive, particularly its ability to add a realistic sheen to materials like silk or create the subtle translucency that can be seen on skin. To be fair, these aren't huge visual leaps, but they can help create a better sense of immersion.
Now I'm sure some AI proponents will say that the technology will get better from here on out, and at some unspecified point in the future it may approach the quality of human ingenuity. May be. But I'm personally tired of the artificial intelligence fantasy, even though we know the key to great scripts and performances is giving human talent the time and resources to perfect their craft. And on a certain level, I think I will always feel director Hayao Miyazakiwho described an early example of a creature with artificial intelligence and computer graphics as “an insult to life itself.”
AI, like any new technology, is a tool that can be used in many ways. In terms of graphics and gameplay (such as smart enemies in FEAR And The Last of Us), this makes sense. But when it comes to interacting with NPCs, writing their dialogue, and creating their performances, I've come to value human effort more than anything else. Replacing this with lifeless AI in no way feels like a step forward.