Jam & Tea Studios Launches AI-Driven NPCs In New Game ‘Retail Mage’ - 1

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Jam & Tea Studios Launches AI-Driven NPCs In New Game ‘Retail Mage’

  • Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
  • Fact-Checked by Justyn Newman Former Lead Cybersecurity Editor

Jam & Tea Studios , a gaming startup founded by industry veterans, announced today that it is introducing generative AI to enhance interactions with non-playable characters (NPCs) in its new game, Retail Mage, as first reported by TechCrunch .

In Retail Mage, players assume the role of a wizard working in a magical furniture store, where they can choose to assist customers or create disorder. Unlike traditional NPCs that follow scripted interactions, the AI-powered characters in Retail Mage can engage in unscripted conversations.

Additionally, the game allows for interaction with objects, AI item creation, and spontaneous activities such as playing hide-and-seek with NPCs. Furthermore, the AI enables NPCs to respond unpredictably to player actions, contributing to a more varied experience.

The use of AI in gaming is becoming more widespread, with companies like Nvidia also exploring AI-driven NPCs. Ubisoft , for example, has developed a tool called “Ghostwriter” to automate NPC dialogue in some of its games, as reported by TechCrunch.

However, the increasing reliance on AI has raised concerns within the creative community, particularly among voice actors and writers, who fear that AI could threaten jobs and creative control. These concerns recently led to a strike by SAG-AFTRA , the union representing many of these workers, against major game publishers.

Jam & Tea Studios acknowledges these concerns and states that they are taking a cautious approach to AI integration. The company emphasizes that while AI can generate dialogue and interactions, human creatives remain essential for shaping the game’s narrative and emotional impact.

“It’s especially frustrating to see so much oxygen in the room getting consumed by folks who pit AI innovations against creative folks, when there is so much potential for it to unlock new kinds of storytelling and creative expression,” said in a post M. Yichao, co-founder and chief creative officer of Jam & Tea.

He adds, “As AI gets better and better at producing content, the need and hunger for human ingenuity, creativity, and specificity will only increase. Writing naturalistic copy or creating a believable stock photo is very different from composing an experience across mediums that resonates yet surprises, that feels fresh and new, yet inviting and familiar.’’

However, the use of AI in NPCs is not without challenges. One significant issue is AI unpredictability, where NPC behavior can become erratic, leading to a frustrating player experience. Furthermore, AI systems can produce incorrect or nonsensical responses, as reported by TechCrunch.

Despite these challenges, Retail Mage demonstrates the potential for AI to create a flexible and engaging gameplay. TechCrunch notes that in one play-test, an NPC spontaneously initiated a game of hide-and-seek with the player, showcasing the possibilities of emergent behavior that AI can offer.

Retail Mage is expected to launch later this fall, with the company planning to charge $15 for the game and offer additional content for purchase. While the game itself is relatively simple, Jam & Tea Studios sees it as an early step in exploring the broader applications of AI in gaming, as reported by TechCrunch.

The startup is also working on a more complex project, tentatively named “Project Emily,” which aims to further expand on the technology introduced in Retail Mage, as noted by TechCrunch.

Big Websites Opt Out Of Apple Intelligence Training - 2

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Big Websites Opt Out Of Apple Intelligence Training

  • Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert

Multiple publishers, media organizations, and social media networks have requested to be excluded from Apple’s AI training program for Apple Intelligence, Applebot-Extended, which the company launched a few months ago.

According to Wired , big websites and organizations like The New York Times, Instagram, Facebook, USA Today, The Atlantic, The Financial Times, Condé Nast, and Vox Media, have confirmed to refuse access to their content.

Apple launched Applebot in 2015, a web crawler—an automated program to browse content and analyze data—to train its assistant Siri and its search feature Spotlight. The new extension, Applebot-Extended, launched in June is being used to train the company’s AI products.

“With Applebot-Extended, web publishers can choose to opt out of their website content being used to train Apple’s foundation models powering generative AI features across Apple products, including Apple Intelligence, Services, and Developer Tools,” states the document shared by Apple in June, where it also adds the code to disallow Applebot-Extended.

Multiple websites have opted out in an attempt to protect their data and intellectual property, but, since it’s a new web crawler, not too many websites have done this yet.

The Canadian startup Originality AI analyzed traffic from 1,000 websites with high traffic and only 7% were blocking the bot. Google and OpenAI have also launched new web crawlers to train their AI products. According to data journalist Ben Welsh, 53% of the news websites they recently analyzed block OpenAI’s bot, which launched in September last year. Welsh told Wired that the number of websites blocking these web crawlers to train AI has been gradually increasing.

As a strategy to reach agreements regarding data protection and copyright with the major publications in the market, OpenAI has been negotiating new deals. The company recently announced new partnerships with large media companies like Condé Nast , TIME , and News Corp .