Revitalizing Virtual Characters: NVIDIA ACE for Games Unleashes the Power of Generative AI

NVIDIA has announced the introduction of NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for Games, a specialized AI model foundry service that revolutionizes gaming by incorporating intelligence into non-playable characters (NPCs) through AI-powered natural language interactions.

NVIDIA ACE for Games Sparks Life Into Virtual Characters With Generative AI

Game developers, middleware providers, and tool creators can leverage ACE for Games to develop and deploy customized speech, conversation, and animation AI models within their software and games.

John Spitzer, NVIDIA’s vice president of developer and performance technology, expressed excitement about the potential of generative AI to transform player interactions with game characters and enhance immersion. NVIDIA’s expertise in AI and extensive collaboration with game developers position them at the forefront of utilizing generative AI in games.

ACE for Games, built on the NVIDIA Omniverse platform, provides optimized AI foundation models for speech, conversation, and character animation. This includes NVIDIA NeMo™ for building and customizing language models, NVIDIA Riva for automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities, and NVIDIA Omniverse Audio2Face™ for generating expressive facial animation that matches speech tracks. Developers have the flexibility to integrate the entire ACE for Games solution or choose specific components as needed.

NVIDIA collaborated with Convai, an NVIDIA Inception startup focused on conversational AI for virtual game worlds, to demonstrate the potential of ACE for Games. In the demo called “Kairos,” players interact with Jin, an NPC who responds realistically to natural language queries in line with the game’s narrative backstory, thanks to generative AI.

The ACE for Games foundry service allows developers to fine-tune models for their games and deploy them via NVIDIA DGX Cloud, GeForce RTX PCs, or on-premises for real-time inferencing. The models are optimized for low latency to ensure immersive and responsive interactions in games.

Leading game developers and startups are already leveraging NVIDIA‘s generative AI technologies. For example, GSC Game World is adopting Audio2Face in the highly anticipated game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chernobyl, while Fallen Leaf is using Audio2Face for character facial animation in their sci-fi thriller Fort Solis. Charisma.ai utilizes Audio2Face to power animation in its conversation engine, enabling virtual characters through AI.

To explore further advancements in NVIDIA Omniverse, ACE, and other technology developments, attendees can learn more at COMPUTEX.