AI Characters Are a Hollywood Wake-Up Call

Share

I write each different Tuesday for paid subscribers and not too long ago coated the app Cursor that’s disrupting screenwriting; the Chinese language AI that ought to scare you; the billion-dollar alternative in everlasting celebrities; and OpenAI’s Ghiblification second.

When the newest trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI dropped two weeks in the past, it grew to become the most-viewed online game reveal in historical past. Greater than 100 million views poured in inside 24 hours on Rockstar Video games’ YouTube channel, and over a half-billion views got here in that week from all sources.

That’s a staggering quantity, outpacing not solely each GTA launch thus far however even current Marvel and Star Wars releases. This wasn’t simply one other gaming second — it was a worldwide leisure occasion. TikTok creators posted parody edits inside hours. Response movies flooded YouTube. Even mainstream information shops, usually sluggish to deal with video games as culturally equal to movie, coated this launch. And the trailer was dropped partly to announce a delay within the launch of the sport itself — from the beforehand deliberate fall 2025 to simply over a yr from at this time.

However an important a part of GTA VI’s announcement wasn’t its trailer. It was what got here subsequent, in an alleged leak from somebody engaged on the sport. Buried deep within the trusty message boards of Reddit have been the rumors that Rockstar Video games could be deploying AI-powered crowds and NPCs — non-playable characters — designed to behave with unscripted, dynamic logic.

These characters wouldn’t simply repeat looped strains or observe mounted patrols. They’d keep in mind, react, and evolve. They’d go to the seashore on sure days and keep at house on others. They’d keep in mind should you’d damage them earlier than or been variety. They’d change moods in the event that they have been at a live performance or caught in site visitors. Briefly, if the rumors are true, the characters of GTA VI will cease behaving like signposts meant to push game-players via sure missions and as a substitute behave like . . . actual folks.

Even Crimson Lifeless Redemption 2, made by Rockstar years earlier than the present AI wave, hinted at what was doable. Its NPCs modified dialogue relying on how usually you bathed. Shopkeepers developed grudges. Animals migrated. Now think about those self same characters powered by generative reminiscence and AI voice engines.

It’s principally an amplification of an present technique for Rockstar, and but the ramifications will probably be profound. In actual fact, the mixing of AI in video video games might do extra to disrupt Hollywood than any change throughout the studio system over the past decade. (Elaine Low wrote in regards to the demand for Hollywood to supply interactive tales yesterday out of the Upfronts — however that’s simply tip-of-the-iceberg stuff.)

Right this moment, I discover:

• How AI turns into a retention engine in gaming tales

• Marvel vs. GTA: Why the worth of videogame franchises is on path to dwarf film franchises

• How the creation of AI NPCs bypasses guilds and brokers

• Why studio and streamer efforts to create sturdy video games have sputtered

• How video games’ AI improvements change the understanding of what story is

• Financial and storytelling benefits of gaming in comparison with TV and movie

• The jaw-dropping quantity of people that play video video games — and the staggering valuations of gaming corporations vs. Hollywood studios

• How AI may make video games and their corporations much more highly effective

• The businesses constructing extra and smarter tech to provide NPCs extra expertise

Share