Further proving that absolutely nobody learned anything from the Terminator movies, Sony has patented an AI that can study someone’s playstyle and take over playing a game for them. The idea is explained in more detail in a recent patent application (spotted by SegmentNext) that describes the application as an “automated artificial intelligence control mode for playing specific tasks during gaming applications.”

The method works by assigning an AI with a set of generic behaviors to a player’s profile. Over time, the AI will observe how the player plays games and and apply it to their profile, meaning the AI will start making decisions the same way the player does. Eventually, this process should create an AI profile that plays the same way the player does, and the player will be able to let the AI take over and play the game for them.

This method could have several uses, including allowing the AI to take over and play difficult sections on the player’s behalf, which is something the games using the feature could track. “If the AI character has completed specific tasks, those tasks can be identified as being completed by the user with assistance from the AI game controller,” the patent explains.

The patent also gives another interesting example. If playing a co-op or multiplayer game, the AI could potentially take over if one player has to leave the game to eat dinner or do some work. In this case, the player can set the AI to play in “automatic mode” so the game can continue until the player returns.

This patent isn’t entirely unexpected since Sony launched an organization to research and develop AI technology in 2019. While there are definitely uses for such technology, and the cited examples are intriguing, you have to wonder if it’s a good idea considering the potential dangers of AI. I guess we’ll find out if Sony decides to do anything other than patent it.

AI in video games is one of the things that haven’t improved as significantly as the other parts of the medium. While things like graphics, resolutions, processing speeds, and production values have soared to a staggering degree over the last few decades, AI has not progressed as much, particularly when it comes to NPC crowds, which have largely acted the same across two or three console generations.

Youichiro Miyake, Square Enix’s lead AI researcher, thinks that’s about to change with new technology. Not only that, he sees new takes on crowd AI as one of the big leaps forward for gaming in the next generation. He spoke with VG247 about what he sees for the future of AI and how it’ll be based around NPC AIs learning based on player actions more precisely than ever before.

“Another piece of the future of AI is obviously going to be machine learning coming in,” said Miyake. “You’re going to see more and more AI that reacts to a player’s playstyle, to their personality. Are they a good gamer, a bad gamer, do they tend to go into combat, or are they exploratory? We’re going to analyse those patterns and then the character AI will largely have a lot of automation, analysing these patterns and dynamically adjusting to that playstyle.

“However, a lot of the evolution of AI is going to come in the meta AI level, which will be controlled by the programmers . So them defining the overall rulesets of the game, but within it there’s pocket-sized machine learning-based AI – that’s probably the new thing we’re going to see with AI evolution.”

He’s not the only one talking about new forms of gaming AI. The developers of the upcoming MotoGP ’19 are experimenting with a new learning-based AI system. It definitely seems like improving AI is on a lot of developers’ minds as we approach a new generation of console gaming.