Dark Horse AI is rewriting the rules of game design

Video game Valuationfast paced Team-based shooterhas recently become a testing ground for a promising new trend in artificial intelligence research. Game developers at Riot Games (a subsidiary of Tencent) are using 3D AI models to create prototypes for new characters, scenes and stories, according to a researcher familiar with the company’s efforts who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

While many AI models can generate text, images, and videos, Tencent’s model Hunyuan (混元 or “first combination”) The model family can dream up 3D objects and interactive scenes. Tencent’s models are also being used by developers of another Tencent game, the source says. G-CartAnd by some independent developers as well. Tencent declined to comment.

“The gaming industry requires a lot of investment,” says the source. “Before, you needed a month to design a character. Now you just write some text, and Hunyuan can give you four choices in 60 seconds.”

This news is an early indication that models capable of understanding and recreating the physical world could become a standard element of game design. In addition to generating gaming content, these models can also enable more advanced virtual and augmented reality and help robots learn to do new things.

“There’s a real explosion in 3D vision research these days,” he says. Alexander Raistricka graduate student at Princeton University working on new methods for creating 3D content. “There are so many killer applications: there’s content creation, there’s autonomous driving, there’s a whole host of problems involved in augmented reality.”

Video games are an obvious application for 3D AI models, Raistrick adds. “Producing 3D meshes (a standard way of representing 3D objects) is the typical kind of bread and butter in game development,” he says.

But, as in other creative fields, using artificial intelligence to create video games is controversial. Concerns about artificial intelligence Job loss looms large. Some developers say Games must be named When they contain content generated by artificial intelligence. Others say it’s too late: the technology is already everywhere in the industry.

Tencent released Hunyuan World 1.0a model that generates interactive scenes, was released in July. I tested it a few months ago, exploring a scene that looked like something out of a Lego movie, a valley of brightly colored blocks disappearing into the distance. Lately, I’ve been playing with a more basic form, the Hunyuan 3D, which can conjure 3D objects. I’ve used it to create some pretty cool customizations Dungeons and Dragons Characters for 3D printing. In October, Tencent released a new version of HunyuanWorld that allows users to upload video to create 3D scenes.