Greetings from Düsseldorf where SportsInnovation 2024 starts today. Aside from my keynote, I'm looking forward to my fireside chat with the NHL's EVP of Business Development and Innovation, Dave Lehanski, who was recently named Technology Executive of the Year by Sports Business Journal.
In the news: At its Game Developers Conference, NVIDIA presented a series of tech demos to demonstrate how their AI tools can be used to voice, animate, and script dialogue for non-playable characters (NPCs). These NPCs are capable of generating unique responses to player actions, enhancing the gaming experience with more dynamic and varied interactions.
One of these tech demos, Covert Protocol, showed the potential for AI to create highly interactive and personalized gaming narratives. Players engaging with AI-powered NPCs can influence the game’s direction, leading to multiple possible outcomes. In truth, the demo wasn't awesome, but it's early days. When this tech matures, it will be more than awesome.
Covert Protocol was developed in collaboration with Inworld AI and utilizes NVIDIA’s Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE). This partnership with Inworld AI extends beyond gaming applications, and the upcoming release of Covert Protocol’s source code should spur broader adoption of ACE technology among developers.
One other standout was NVIDIA’s Audio2Face, which was showcased in World of Jade Dynasty and Unawake. This tool simplifies the process of creating multilingual games and producing realistic facial animations, addressing the challenges of language diversity and character expression in game development.
If you have any doubts about how AI will impact video production, look no further than the demo videos from NVIDIA's GDC.
As always, your thoughts and comments are both welcome and encouraged. Just reply to this email. -s
ABOUT SHELLY PALMER
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.
