The New GTA 5 Mod Promising a Living, AI-Powered Story Even as the Ethics Debate Heats Up
Artificial intelligence recently infiltrated the world of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V thanks to a new mod.
The mod is called Sentient Streets, and it lets players interact with over 30 AI-powered NPCs across the mission. Each character has a unique voice from AI text-to-speech and voice cloning website ElevenLabs. The mod is designed for players to have open-ended, voiced conversations with cult members, police officers, and civilians.
Sentient Streets was built by veteran modder Bloc using the Inworld Character Engine, which includes features like assigning goals, actions, relationships, and voices to AI-powered NPCs.
On YouTube, Bloc demonstrated how NPC conversations work in Sentient Streets. You approach a character, press a key to get their attention, and then you can start speaking to them through your microphone. Bloc asked a police officer his name and how he got his nickname, and after a short pause, the NPC responded with a small anecdote. It's not entirely natural — the NPC repeated some information in back-to-back answers — but every character is programmed with different personalities and backstories.
The NPCs did respond to whatever question Bloc asked through the microphone, but you can definitely tell the answers are AI generated. For example, here's a line from a new police recruit Bloc spoke to in the gameplay video: "Well, well, well, looks like someone's got a keen eye for fresh faces. Guilty as charged, Officer Newbie reporting for duty! Ready to bring some sparkle to this city?"
With Inworld's intelligent #AI NPCs and @elevenlabsio voice technology, experience #GTAV as never before in the Sentient Streets mod by Bloctheworker.Read more about the ElevenLabs x Inworld integration:
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