A new, AI-focused video game patent application from Sony has surfaced online. It describes the use of agents trained on player data to play games for people. Why grind for XP when an authorized bot could do it? Even more dystopian, the patent mentions the possibility of players exchanging their training data with one another for real money.
As spotted by Cheat Happens, Sony’s 19138338 patent, which was filed in 2022 but only officially published last month on July 23, details a “technology of generating an agent to play a game on behalf of a user.” Some of you may remember a similar patent published by Sony back in January, which featured an AI-controlled “ghost” that would complete games for you, but this new patent dives much further into Black Mirror territory.
You see, while the previous patent stated that the AI could be trained on gameplay footage, patent 19138338 instead features an AI that would be trained on the users’ actual gameplay habits. Figure 11 of the patent shows that the AI could then be programmed to perform specific tasks without user input, such as “collect money,” “proceed story,” and “boss battle.”
That’s not the truly weird bit, though. It also states, “In the first and second embodiments, in a case where the user data […]of another user is used for generation of an agent of the user A, the game system 1 may construct a mechanism to receive a payment from the user A for use of the user data […]. By way of example, in a case where the user A generates an agent by using the user data […]of a famous game player, the user A may be allowed to purchase the user data […]of the famous game player.”
So if you can just buy the AI data of a pro player, and then watch that AI recreation of them finish the entire game for you, what exactly would the difference be between this and just watching a playthrough of a game on YouTube? I just don’t get who this is for, or why Sony would bother patenting this in the first place. You’re telling me I can buy a game, and then buy an AI version of a “famous game player” to finish it for me instead of playing it myself? That’s not a video game; that’s just a video.
Gaming companies file patents for technologies and gameplay design principles all the time. That doesn’t mean they ever plan on implementing them. But even if Sony never makes something like AI player agents official, it doesn’t mean a third-party company might explore something similar and start selling it anyway.