You don’t have to endure the pain of solo queue alone anymore, as Krafton, the publishers of the PUBG: Battlegrounds announced that you’ll soon be able to get an NPC companion when you play that’s powered by AI, one that’s useful and not just feed into the first group you see. Meet PUBG Ally.
The entire thing is powered by NVIDIA ACE generative AI, and these Co-Playable Characters can have real-time conversations with players, relaying information about what’s happening, including adapting to your strategies and gameplay to increase your chances of winning.
“We will continue to innovate user experiences by integrating CPC into our games and aim to establish it as a benchmark for the gaming industry,” said Kangwook Lee, head of Krafton’s deep learning division.
The short video that they posted shows the co-playable character responding to voice commands, telling you where enemies are, retrieving assets like vehicles, and even flanking enemies on their own.
As cool as PUBG Ally is, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered, mostly about fairness–how good will the NPC companion’s aim be? Is it fair for an AI to play and engage with other players in a game that’s set in a multiplayer environment? These questions should be answered by Krafton when they roll out the system, though right now there’s no specific period when that’ll be.