Roblox’s new AI chatbot will help you build virtual worlds

theverge.com:

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

Roblox announced a new conversational AI assistant at its 2023 Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) that can help creators more easily make experiences for the popular social app. The new tool, the Roblox Assistant, builds on previously announced features that let creators build virtual assets and write code with the help of generative AI.

With the Roblox Assistant, creators will be able to type in prompts to do things like generate virtual environments. In one demo, somebody types in “I want to make a game set in ancient ruins,” and Roblox drops in some stones, moss-covered columns, and broken architecture. “Make the player spawn by a campfire in the ruins” adds a campfire and a stool. “Add some trees for the player to chop down” adds trees nearby. Roblox will grab assets from either its marketplace or your own visual asset library, according to Roblox spokesperson Roman Skuratovskiy.

You can see that demo and a few more examples in the video below from Roblox.

I’m generally skeptical of generative AI, but I think this is a pretty interesting use for the technology. In an interview with The Verge, Roblox CTO Daniel Sturman described how the tool might be able to create basic gameplay behaviors like teleporting you to a place if you touch a door. The Roblox Assistant can also help with coding and answer questions about developing on Roblox, which could be useful tools for creators on the platform.

Unfortunately, creators won’t be able to use Roblox Assistant right away, as Sturman said that the tool is going to launch at the end of this year or early next