Square Enix is using a classic adventure game for an AI tech preview

destructoid.com:

Square Enix is showcasing some possibilities for AI tech, and it’s using an old classic to do so. The Portopia Serial Murder Case is getting a PC remaster on April 23 with its AI Tech Preview, with brand-new Natural Language Processing tech.

Artificial intelligence use in games has quickly become a hot-button topic, and for good reason. The rise of systems that generate text, images, or anything else has open a bit of a Pandora’s Box in terms of original sourcing, ethics, and specifically for games, how something gets made.

I’m starting here because, well, Square Enix has a history with new tech trends. So when I first saw “AI Tech Preview” appended to a re-release of 1983’s The Portopia Serial Murder Case, I was skeptical. And I still am. But I’m now, at least, a little bit curious too.

The AI tech Square is using aligns with Natural Language Processing, or NLP. In a very basic sense, think of it as a machine learning to understand language in a more conversational setting. Using deep learning and large text data sets, a system could start to understand complex text input, and generate responses.

The Portopia Serial Murder Case includes some of this in the tech preview releasing on April 23. Namely, NLU—Natural Language Understanding—is used to help computers understand natural language. Think of old adventure games that used text input, like Zork. Sometimes, you might have to get specific with your wording or phrasing to do the thing you’d want to do.

The goal of Portopia is to smooth some of that out. Rather than a direct adventure, you’re directing a detective around, conducting the investigation with them. You can see in this screenshot how the NLU interprets various responses, and then presents a response.

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