Sony Director Spotted Interacting with AI-Powered Aloy in Leaked Video

Reports have emerged that PlayStation is leveraging characters from its most popular franchises to develop an AI prototype. A recently leaked video appears to depict Sharwin Raghoebardajal, PlayStation's director of software engineering, engaging in conversation with an early AI-powered Aloy prototype. Although the video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Sony, it allegedly showed Raghoebardajal delivering a brief technical demonstration of Aloy responding to voice commands, both within the AI prototype and in the game Horizon Forbidden West. Raghoebardajal noted, "This is just a glimpse of what is possible," before illustrating how Aloy can provide players with lore and background information upon request. While the voice used does not match the in-game Aloy, the character model responds intelligently to questions, accompanied by synchronized facial expressions and movement. According to Raghoebardajal, this is an internal demo developed by Sony. The Verge's reporting reveals that the AI system utilizes OpenAI's whisper for speech-to-text functionality, as well as GPT-4 and Llama 3 for communication and decision-making. Additionally, Sony's Mockingbird technology powers the audio-to-facial animation, and Emotional Voice Synthesis (EVS) drives speech. Although the prototype was running on a PC, Sony believes it can be implemented on PS5 consoles with minimal overhead. This development comes on the heels of reports that the voice talent team behind Apex Legends' French characters refused to sign contracts authorizing their voices to be used for AI training.