Korea’s game companies ramp up efforts to use AI in production process

NCSoft Corp. headquarters [Courtesy of NCSoft]

South Korea’s major game companies, including NCSoft Corp., Krafton Inc. and Smilegate, jumped into generative artificial intelligence research following the ChatGPT craze that hit the world at the end of last year and are currently utilizing AI models throughout the game development process, while focusing on developing living characters that can interact and communicate with game users like real people, according to multiple sources from the game Industry on Wednesday.

Since 2015, NCSoft has established a natural language processing (NLP) team under its AI Lab and created an AI model that can understand and speak Korean sentences. The company is expanding its investment to introduce AI models, which have been limited to game chat translation and customer data analysis, to the entire process of game production and services.

It plans to complete an AI platform that can be used by front-line development organizations by the end of the year to use generative AI models in all aspects of game production, including code writing and art creation. Additionally, the company is developing its own interactive AI model like ChatGPT and Bard.

“We are developing a small language model that can be applied to games and is at a level that can be released to the public,” said an NCSoft official. “Ultimately, we aim to develop an AI model that performs like ChatGPT version 3.5.”

Krafton is also actively using AI in the game development process while focusing on developing services that will allow gamers to experience in person. One of them is the Virtual Friend, an AI that can interact and enjoy games with users in natural language. Currently, the company is at the stage of testing through separate in-house demonstrations, but aims to integrate it with existing games such as Battlegrounds or Migaloo, a metaverse that is being developed with Naver Z, a local developer of an application where users can create different three-dimensional (3D) avatars online using facial recognition, AR and 3D technology.

”With our competitive AI-based technology, we will be able to shorten the production period of new games and increase our potential for future growth by implementing features that have never been available before,” said Bae Dong-keun, chief financial officer of Krafton, during the company’s first-quarter earnings announcement earlier last month.

Smilegate is focusing on applying AI to virtual human technology through its AI Center launched in 2020. A case in point is Han YuA, a virtual human that the company introduced in 2021 in partnership with local company GIANTSTEP Inc. There are many game companies that have introduced virtual humans on rising popularity of metaverse technology, but Smilegate is actively incorporating AI into them to present natural voices and facial expressions. The company even introduced texts and drawings written and drawn by Han YuA herself. Smilegate also signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a local company that has automation technology for video content production, focusing on the creative potential of AI.