I remember when Ms. Pac-Man was chased by her ghostly enemies, Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde. Though that was not the first AI in games, and it was a simple rule-based form of AI, those ghosts showed the world the endless fun that could be born of a reactive algorithm. Since those early days in the arcade, game creators have incorporated game AI to build living worlds, dynamic stories, and complex characters. Procedurally generated worlds further advanced gaming by introducing endless variability and replayability. Most recently, as game creators have begun experimenting with AI Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s GPT (the AI that powers ChatGPT and Bing Chat), we see a world of opportunities to accelerate game developer creativity, reduce complexity, and enhance player experiences.

At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games. Today, we are announcing a multi-year partnership with Inworld AI, an M12-portfolio company, to build AI game dialogue & narrative tools at scale.

This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.

Together, we aim to deliver an accessible, responsibly designed multi-platform AI toolset to assist and empower creators in dialogue, story & quest design.  The toolset will include:

• An AI design copilot that assists and empowers game designers to explore more creative ideas, turning prompts into detailed scripts, dialogue trees, quests and more.
• An AI character runtime engine that can be integrated into the game client, enabling entirely new narratives with dynamically-generated stories, quests, and dialogue for players to experience.

As with all creators tools we make at Xbox, our goal is to deliver state-of-the-art AI tools for game developers of any size, anywhere in the world and on every platform where players want to play. We want to help make it easier for developers to realize their visions, try new things, push the boundaries of gaming today and experiment to improve gameplay, player connection and more. We will collaborate and innovate with game creators inside Xbox studios as well as third-party studios as we develop the tools that meet their needs and inspire new possibilities for future games.

Our approach to AI is based on three principles: meaningful innovation, empowering people and organizations, and responsibility.  We are committed to creating responsible AI by design, building on Microsoft’s AI principles and Microsoft’s Responsible AI Standard. And we continue our ongoing commitment to bring intentional, inclusive practices and thinking to everything we do at Xbox.

Partnering with Inworld is an important step in our journey to empower game developers. We look forward to sharing more as we empower game creation with AI.