Nvidia’s AI NPCs are no longer chatbots – they’re your novel PUBG teammate

Nvidia has spent the last two years showing off its “ACE” digital characters that can engage in in-game conversations with you using generative artificial intelligence. But at CES 2025, the company is taking its ACE characters a step further, showing how they can be “autonomous game characters” — including, sometime this year, a teammate who will support you prepare a chicken dinner PUBG.

Nvidia says ACE characters can exploit artificial intelligence to “perceive, plan and behave like humans” for the blog post. “Powered by generative artificial intelligence, ACE will enable vivid, dynamic game worlds with companions that understand and support the player’s goals, and enemies that dynamically adapt to the player’s tactics.” Characters exploit “small language models (SLMs)” that “can plan at near-human frequencies required for realistic decision-making,” as well as “multimodal SLMs providing video and audio that enable AI characters to hear audio cues and perceive their surroundings.”

As for how it will work PUBGyou will be able to cooperate with “PUBG Ally” which Nvidia and PUBG publisher Krafton calls “the world’s first cooperative play character (CPC).” The ally will be able to “communicate using game-specific jargon, provide real-time strategic recommendations, find and share loot, drive vehicles, and fight other players using the extensive arsenal of weapons available in the game,” Nvidia says.

Essentially, this looks like an AI teammate that can be conversed with in natural language and should be as capable as a human. AND video shows that the Alliance actually helps the player find specific loot, brings in a vehicle and tries to flank the opponents. But the video is heavily edited and not live, so I’m skeptical that Ally will perform as well as it’s shown to do here.

AI characters built with ACE will also appear in other games. Naraka: Bladepoint notebook version will receive “Teammate local AI inference capability” in March 2025, while Naraka: Blade’s Edge According to Nvidia’s blog post, the feature will arrive on PC “later in 2025.” “AI teammates powered by NVIDIA ACE can join your team, fight alongside you, find specific items you need, swap gear, offer suggestions for unlockable skills, and make moves that will help you achieve victory.”

Krafton’s upcoming life simulation game is called wZOI they will also receive a CPC summons “Wise Zosia”. Nvidia says ACE characters can also be bosses and will be used during boss encounters Wemade Next MIR5.