A new patent filed by Sony indicates that the company is exploring the concept of using AI technology to provide assistance for players that might get stuck in a game. The patent has been titled in the filing as an AI Generated Ghost Player, with plenty of diagrams that explain how this concept would work, like how the AI would communicate with its processors as well as the game engine itself to provide help to players.
The patent describes “methods, systems, and devices for providing ghost assistance to a player during gameplay,” which will involve the creation of a “ghost character”. The AI powering this would be trained from quite a bit of training footage and is capable of identifying game scenarios and the various interactions players can have in the game’s world to then provide assistance. This “ghost character”, when triggered by the player, can show them what they can do to get through the part of the game they are stuck in.
The level at which this ghost character can assist is expected to be customisable, with options for limited assistance to more comprehensive walkthroughs. Examples provided range from the AI simply telling the player what they should do, to showcasing complex controller inputs required in some parts of gameplay, and even guiding the player on specific gameplay styles. Players are also expected to be able to ask for assistance from the ghost character directly, with this communication happening through natural language.
“Some solutions have included the use of a character that a user can follow,” wrote Sony in the patent application. “However, the character is usually a graphic image or outlined image of a prior player that played the game, and the user must follow the character watching the moves that occurred (including moves and interaction that is not relevant to the user’s current gameplay scenarios).”
“This is not, however, very useful for real-time assistance to a player that is encountering some difficulty with a specific scenario of gameplay or along the player’s specific gameplay path. This is because the character does not know specifically what the player is playing or the context of the user’s gameplay.”
While the idea of this AI-based guide sounds interesting on the surface, how it would be implemented in current-gen hardware would be another question altogether. The base PS5, for instance, doesn’t have any internal hardware necessary for processing this kind of AI, unlike the PS5 Pro, which has some AI capabilities to handle things like PSSR.
It is also likely that this patent might simply be giving us a picture of things to come. Sony will likely include some form of neural processing hardware in its next-gen systems, and an AI-based feature that helps players stuck in difficult parts of games could end up being one of the bigger features that the company can advertise. However, this patent could also simply be Sony exploring an idea without concrete plans on using it just yet, as we see with patent applications quite often.
