Leaked Sony AI video makes the future of PS6 and next gen Xbox plain
Next gen PlayStation games will feature AI powered characters you can talk to, if a leaked prototype from Sony is anything to go by.
Next gen PlayStation games will feature AI powered characters you can talk to, if a leaked prototype from Sony is anything to go by.
Whether you like it or loathe it (and chances are it’s the latter), generative AI technology is permeating more and more throughout society, and that includes the games industry.
Over the last couple of years, publishers have grown comfortable with using AI generated artwork and voice acting, and now you have the likes of Microsoft threatening to make entire games with the tech.
Microsoft is one of the most enthusastic about the technology and it seems increasingly likely that the boast about their next gen console having the ‘biggest technological leap ever in a generation’ is related to AI. But if a leaked video from Sony is anything to go by, the inevitable PlayStation 6 could involve very similar next gen plans.
According to The Verge, Sony has been working on a prototype for an AI powered version of Horizon Forbidden West protagonist Aloy. The prototype was allegedly developed alongside series developer Guerrilla Games and can apparently hold a conversation with players through voice prompts during gameplay.
This comes from a video featuring one Sharwin Raghoebardajal (a director of software engineering who specialises in AI technology at PlayStation Studios), who demonstrates the AI Aloy in action, both in a demo environment and during a slice of gameplay in Forbidden West.
The video was shared with The Verge by an anonymous tipster and uploaded to YouTube, although it has since been pulled due to a copyright claim made on behalf of Sony (thus confirming its legitimacy). It was up long enough for people to grab clips of it in action, though.
Although Raghoebardajal stressed this is only a prototype, made to demonstrate the tech internally, he added, ‘This is just a glimpse of what is possible.’ This very much implies that people within Sony are eager to push this tech and integrate it into future games.
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— Mil ???? The Outer Wilds (@melonsaurus.bsky.social) 2025-03-10T19:37:36.978ZIgnoring the irony of using Aloy – a character who’s forced to deal with the post-apocalyptic ramifications of shortsighted tech moguls – for the prototype, the video doesn’t answer any of the important questions it raises, like how does this benefit players and what sort of impact will it have on the people involved with making the games?
The prototype uses Sony’s Mockingbird technology to make Aloy’s face move, so does this mean the company won’t commission human face models any more? (Aloy’s is Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra.)
If Sony can make Aloy say whatever it wants using AI generated voicework, is it going to keep bringing her voice actor, Ashly Burch, back in for future sequels? AI Aloy doesn’t sound like Burch at all and voice actors are still on strike because companies want to record their voices only once and then use AI afterwards, without paying any royalties.
Burch has already gone on record denouncing the tech. During last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, she commented on AI voices during a panel, calling the tech ‘a huge concern for our professions, for voice actors and movement performers’ (via Deadline), so it’s unlikely she’d sign any deal for Sony to artificially recreate her performance.
Although Sony has been less publicly enthusastic about AI (its previous attempts to talk about it have been largely incoherent), when Microsoft unveiled its AI development tool, Muse, several anonymous developers emphatically condemned it and insinuated that while there is internal pushback against it people are scared they’ll lose their jobs over it.
Rather than the moral issues, the biggest sticking point with AI technology in games is that it’s untested and unproven. Even if you find AI Aloy answering questions impressive, it’s been demonstrated in a controlled environment and thus safe from the inherent randomness of an average person messing around with it.
It’s worryingly reminiscent of what Peter Molyneux promised back in 2009, when he demonstrated a tech demo for the Kinect called Project Milo, featuring a woman interacting with a virtual in-game character that could respond in real-time. As you can probably guess, plans for this to become a full-fledged game never went anywhere.
Wiring up a non-player character to a ChatGPT style AI does seem an obvious use of the technology but not only has that not been successfully demonstrated in a game yet but Microsoft’s more ambitious plans, of using AI to create large portions of a game on the fly, are completely untested.
Kinect may be relevant in more ways than one, in that its motion-sensing technology was used way before it was ready and, by its disappointment, put everyone off the concept in general.
If AI was ready to be at the heart of the next gen game consoles you would expect to have seen an explosion of corporate and amateur tech demos by now, but instead it’s all been very simple, unnecessary things like doing low level artists and voice actors out of work.
Publishers would no doubt love to generate whole games using AI, and Microsoft certainly seems to be trying to move in that direction, but there’s no evidence so far of it being useful on that scale.
That risks basing the next generation of consoles, including the PlayStation 6, around flawed technical demos to impress investors rather than technology that’s actually going to make more entertaining games.
We’re going to get so much mileage out of this picture (Nightdive Studios)Email [email protected], leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.
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