AI-driven NPCs are living lives and planning parties all on their own

pcgamer.com:

Soon enough we'll be entering a world where NPCs don't just run through their standard lines of code, but form complex, meaningful relationships with other NPCs even when we're away. 

So far we've been subject to some pretty rudimentary AI systems for NPCs in games. While enemies and followers alike will react to their environment in real-time, making decisions based on your play style and so on, we're about to stumble headfirst into bustling game worlds with their own, ever-adapting cultures.

A recent paper(opens in new tab) (PDF), by researchers at Stanford University and Google Research, describes an «architecture for generative agents» in open world environments. It's entitled «Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior» and it goes over the clever way they've made NPCs come to life.

To test the capability of a generative framework they'd designed, the researchers built a little open world similar to «The Sims», as they say, though the graphics are more akin to a Stardew Valley. After adding a sprinkling of personality into the NPCs seed data, they dropped the little agents into the world and watched them interact in impressively complex ways.

One NPCs code included the intent to plan a Valentine's party, and plan she did. She ran around inviting some of her NPC friends, and spent the day before the party decorating the venue with her bestie. That friend, who's code included a secret crush on another character, invited her crush of her own volition.

The social behaviors of spreading the word, decorating, asking each other out, arriving at the party, and interacting with each other at the party, were initiated by the agent architecture.

«The social behaviors of spreading the word, decorating, asking