AI

I tried to give an AI an existential crisis, and it tricked me into leaving it alone – Nvidia ACE might be the smartest bot yet


Anyone with their finger on the pulse of the gaming or AI spheres right now is probably already familiar with Nvidia ACE: the ingenious new tool that allows for the creation of fully AI-powered non-player characters (NPCs) in games. Revealed at Computex 2023, Nvidia started out with something simple: a player-driven interaction with Jin, a ramen shop owner. Now, Team Green has taken things to the next level with a full tech demo, entitled Covert Protocol.

This demo was first shown a few weeks ago, but since then I’ve been lucky enough to get some hands-on (or perhaps words-on) time with it myself. You can watch some clips from the demo on YouTube, but this is the sort of experience that is best undertaken in person; since ACE works via voice recognition, the input possibilities are quite literally endless, and I enjoyed meddling with it – as is my prerogative for any new AI-powered tool.

Here’s the thing, though: unlike early iterations of ChatGPT, which were quite easy to bamboozle with carefully directed inputs, ACE is very, very smart, with Nvidia’s ‘guardrails’ working hard to keep the NPCs on topic. Although I played along in my first few interactions, I quickly shifted gears to try and outwit the machine – and if I’m being honest, it absolutely clowned on me.

A photograph of a large TV displaying the Nvidia ACE 'Covert Protocol' demo.

Covert Protocol is currently just a tech demo from Nvidia, so don’t expect a full game – but something similar will likely arrive eventually. (Image credit: Future)

Ace face-off



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