Roblox is testing a tool that could accelerate the process of building and altering in-game objects by gettingĀ artificial intelligence to write the code. The tool lets anyone playing Roblox create items such as buildings, terrain, and avatars; change the appearance and behavior of those things; and give them new interactive properties by typing what they want to achieve in natural language rather than complex code.
āSay I need a gleaming metal sword for an experience Iām creating,ā says Daniel Sturman, CTO at Roblox. āIt should be really easy to create that.ā
Sturman showed WIRED a new Roblox tool that generates the code needed to create objects and modify their appearance and behavior. In the demo, typing āred pain, reflective metal finish,ā or āpurple foil, crushed pattern, reflectiveā into a chat window changed the appearance of a sports car in the game. It was also possible to add new game behavior by entering āBlink the headlines every time the user presses āB,āā and āMake it float.ā
Technology dubbedĀ generative AI has captured attention and investment over the past year by showingĀ that algorithms can produceĀ seemingly coherent textĀ andĀ aesthetically pleasing images when given a short text prompt. The technology relies on AI models trained with lots of data, in the form of text or images scraped from the web, and is also at work in theĀ viral chatbot ChatGPT. Some AI researchers are experimenting with similar techniques for generating video and 3D content, but this is mostly at an early stage.Ā Ā
ProducingĀ computer code was one of the first practical applications for generative AI, andĀ Microsoft andĀ Amazon already sell tools that canĀ auto-write useful blocks of software. But Robloxās announcement shows how companies can adapt code-writing capabilities to create their own generative AI products aimed at people who may not be experienced coders.
Sturman says the approach holds promise for Roblox because so many of theĀ games on its platform are made by individuals or small teams. āWe have everything on our platform, from studios down to 12-year-olds who have had an incredible idea come out of a summer camp,ā Sturman says.
Roblox says the code-making AI it uses relies on a combination of in-house technology and capabilities from outside sources, although it is not disclosing where from. Currently the company is only training its AI using game content that is in the public domain. Sturman says Roblox will tread carefully to ensure that users do not object to having their creations fed into generative AI algorithms.
Microsoft was theĀ first to harness the latest generation of AI for coding, through a deal with OpenAI, which has adapted a general purpose language technology called GPT to power a code generator called Codex. Microsoft enhanced the Codexās coding abilities by feeding it more data from GitHub, a popular repository for software development, and has made it available through its Visual Studio programming application.
Visual Studio and other AI-enabled programming environments typically write code in response to a developerās comment or when the user starts typing. The startupĀ Replit, which makes a popular online programming tool, recently launched a chatbot-like interface that will not only write code but answer programming questions.Ā
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Besides generating content, generative AI could change in-game behavior. In May 2022,Ā Microsoft demonstrated a way to control characters inĀ Minecraft by feeding naturally phrased instructions to a code-writing AI that accessed the gameās application programming interface. This is similar to what Roblox is doing but involves using AI coding to change not just game creation but gameplay itself.
āGenerative AI will fundamentally transform game development, but itās not going to happen overnight,ā says Julian Togelius, an associate professor at New York University who works on AI and video games. Roblox is a good company to experiment with the technology, Togelius says, because its users are creators and itās something of an upstart. But ultimately, he says, more use of AI will require rethinking game development and game design.Ā
Mark Riedl, a professor at Georgia Tech who also specializes in AI and games, says that just as generative AI can cause unpredictable and problematic web search results, it could potentially cause games to misbehave.Ā āGame developers are generally very conservative and want guarantees about the quality of player experience,ā he says.
Some Roblox makers have already been dabbling with generative AI tools. Developers atĀ Supersocial, a company that makes Roblox games for lifestyle brands, have been using a tool calledĀ MidJourney to test out new designs for in-game objects. MidJourney is one of severalĀ new art tools that use AI to generate images in response to a text prompt. āItās at an early stage, but it creates ways to build more innovatively,ā says Yonatan Raz-Fridman, Supersocialās CEO.Ā
Raz-Fridman says he is excited about the code generation technology that Roblox has in the works. āBuilding in 3D is an incredible endeavor,ā Raz-Fridman says. āIf generative AI can accelerate the pace of development, that would be enormous.ā
And he expects the use of AI to generate more aspects of games and control characters to seem normal in the future. āBy the end of the decade, itāll be so ingrained in everything we wonāt even think of it as AI.āĀ