Wish there was more Cyberpunk in your Cyberpunk? Modder Tomatojuice has released a mod, CyberAI, for Cyberpunk 2077 which adds ChatGPT’s Open AI abilities to the game.
The goal of CyberAI is to leverage OpenAI’s coding ability to add new content to the game. According to Tomatojuice, the mod can be used for extreme modifications, including adding entire new characters, dialogue options, and questlines to the game. Want a new questline with entirely new characters that will trigger when you kill a particular NPC (non-player character)? CyberAI can do that, and it can link up with other LLMs (large language models), so you’ve got options other than OpenAI’s ChatGPT. So, if you really wanted to, you could create your own version of ChatGPT with its own library, and use that to power CyberAI instead.
This is, in many ways, a more advanced version of mechanics we’ve already seen in older video games. The Nemesis system from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War is an intelligent system within the two games which creates unique storylines and bosses for the player, based on interactions and choices they’ve made before. But even The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, a game released in 2011, contained the Radiant quest system, which created an almost infinite number of quests sending the player to hunt various enemies.
CyberAI is obviously more advanced than either of these systems, being capable of creating whole new storylines and characters, but it is a compelling first instance of how AI can be used to further features we’ve already seen explored in previous games.
The role of AI in game development is something of a thorny issue at the moment, as it is within every creative industry. However, this mod shows that, with the correct safeguards in place to secure people’s jobs, AI can be a real boon for game developers. While we can’t speak to the individual quality of CyberAI’s work (and it’s likely it suffers from ChatGPT’s propensity to repeat itself and offer cookie-cutter writing), it’s an intriguing first step in this new area for games.
You can find CyberAI on Nexus Mods.
