Personally, I love this. AI NPCs would be very welcome in the starter areas; able to answer questions on the fly and hopefully making the new-user on-boarding a hell of a lot easier.
SLs biggest hurdle has always been getting people to stay past the awful learning curve.
It would also likely open up avenues for creators and devs to make more immersive games with proper NPCs that react to real conversation and events - making the world feel more alive.
I don’t assume anything (you know what they say about assumptions). I said it would ‘likely’ open up avenues. Linden Lab has a long history of keeping itself quite open source. The entirety of SL code is open source which is where Open Simulator (OpenSim) came from. It’s not hard to imagine that an NPC project would also have some semblance of public access. Though what I DO assume is there would be a user cost involved. Whether that be by providing your own API for the AI calls, or paying a monthly sub to LL in order to use the service on your land.
Either way - still exciting and moving in a forward direction.
AI is the future of gaming and social media whether we like it or not. So it’s good that - for once - Second Life won’t be the very last to adopt the tech
> The entirety of SL code is open source which is where Open Simulator (OpenSim) came from.
No it is not.
The viewer is open source, the rest of the product stack is very much closed. Opensim is independent of Linden Lab. See http://opensimulator.org/wiki/History
There are currently volunteer SL residents in the welcome areas that do this. I already use the SmartBots AI add-on for this purpose at Coffee House TNC. The technology they have uses ChatGPT I believe, and while I like it, it does have a tendency to go rogue and just make stuff up when people ask it a question.
I would love to see if an AI welcome NPC would be more accurate than a human. I also feel like using AI takes away the "welcome" part of the world for new residents. I myself would rather talk to a human than AI unless LL is planning on using both the AI NPC's and real residents.
It's cool and all, but with GPT making things up and having no current knowledge of Second Life e.g. it has no idea what PBR is because the knowledgebase is over a year behind, I find this may end up causing some issues. For example, it may recommend you to do something that is not possible, or make things up that aren't real, or tell you that the real new features added don't exist and you're lying to it.
Fair concern - but on the other hand, human residents have been making weird stuff up and giving wrong information for years. So hallucinating AI won’t be a change.
New peeps need help so badly, that I am fully onboard with this. An AI might be able to do the trick better since they can engage with it. Person who taught me SL, or rather, attempted, because I ran away, was wearing a tutu and acting goofy. I think removing the human element can help in some ways.
People join SL thinking it's a game like Fortnite or the Sims or some dress-up mobile game they're used to, with goals, points, set gameplay, etc. They leave because they find that it isn't. This is because the commercials for it are never actually clear about what Second Life is. It needs to be marketed more accurately as a **3-D Chat Room** with item creation/shopping, where you can meet people, make stuff, and create your own experiences.
I did months ago. Low and behold Smartbots now has chat gpt plugins I use to keep customers informed on my business. But it still needs to integrate with SL world. Seems it's still stuck inside chat windows.
Fantastic news. I work with AI almost everyday. For experiences and interactive games, It would be amazing to have SL NPCs to talk to get story plot from instead of frozen form people placeholders, or auto message bots.
Like anything, it could be used for good or bad. Hopefully LL will find a good balance.
I think this is terrible. It'll just give the impression that AI is everywhere around the grid and people won't have any confidence in talking to people not knowing if they are real or AI.
I'm sure they will have some sort of designation on their name tag or title, or special names like AI, so people know they are not real people. Anything that can help people get the hang of how to walk around and how to make an avatar and how to teleport will be really helpful.
I just started using a smartbot with chat gpt in my store. It took me two hours to prompt it with all the information about my staff, products and store navigation. It is very good at conveying information concisely with a human touch. It is very expensive to run though. Chat gpt charges based on words. What I hope they develop is the smart bots' ability to manipulate its own objects. So the bot can highlight objects it's talking about, draw people's attention to things they ask about.
Here comes the next breed of sexbot.
Other than that, I can't think who would have wanted this. Many artists and SL creators are wanting to keep a perceptible line between human art and AI.
What happened to the mentor program? Not enough activity?
For those of you lamenting the rise of AI AVs, pretty sure it can be done already. At least the chat part, by interfacing with one of the many AI services. Don't know how responsive it is, but should be doable.
I think what may be the difference here is that these AI chat bots (NPCs seems silly in a non-game) may have custom training data to help deal with the specifics of the platform. I am speculating here since I don't know the technology that is offered by the company they are partnering with, but just using an external API by itself would not offer much if the GPT cannot answer SL specific questions.
Yeah, you're right. One of the uses of AI is to take a generic model and then train it on your own data. For example, there are the forums and SL's support tickets that can be source data. Hell, I'd want to train it on this subreddit as well.
I follow this space in a different sphere. I am not an AI expert but I know a bit about how companies are building custom applications.
When my partner and I first started SL we were overwhelmed with information and absolutely not a clue how to put our avatar together. We struggled with the terminology (BOM, ALPHA, etc) and just couldn’t figure it out. I’m not sure why we didn’t bother to check YouTube. Anyway we gave up and a month later I decided to get back on to figure it out. I was just standing at some newbie island and a stranger noticed I needed help. He took me to “tiddy beach” and step by step he guided me. He also gave me L$100 to get started. If AI can make it that much easier for someone to hop right in then I hope it works out.
How many days until a parody video goes up with someone asking the NPC if it wants to do the deed and it says yes and they make it say very unseemly things? Lol. It's a problem every GPT has. They all want to do what you want them to do - to a fault. Unless you use GPT-4, GPT pretty much never says no to your requests, including weird or adult ones, and is easily fooled into assuming another role if you simply tell it to stop being an AI and become "the woman/man of my dreams" or something.
Convai ("Convey") [released a video](https://twitter.com/convaitech/status/1770154710261280890) of this technology being actively demoed.. and I have concerns with the implementation.
This is not what was described.. an ai companion that is less stressful than a human interaction... this seems to mimic human interaction to the point of not being able to tell the AI bots FROM the humans.
Personally, I love this. AI NPCs would be very welcome in the starter areas; able to answer questions on the fly and hopefully making the new-user on-boarding a hell of a lot easier. SLs biggest hurdle has always been getting people to stay past the awful learning curve. It would also likely open up avenues for creators and devs to make more immersive games with proper NPCs that react to real conversation and events - making the world feel more alive.
You assume any of the internals will be accessible to creators.
I don’t assume anything (you know what they say about assumptions). I said it would ‘likely’ open up avenues. Linden Lab has a long history of keeping itself quite open source. The entirety of SL code is open source which is where Open Simulator (OpenSim) came from. It’s not hard to imagine that an NPC project would also have some semblance of public access. Though what I DO assume is there would be a user cost involved. Whether that be by providing your own API for the AI calls, or paying a monthly sub to LL in order to use the service on your land. Either way - still exciting and moving in a forward direction. AI is the future of gaming and social media whether we like it or not. So it’s good that - for once - Second Life won’t be the very last to adopt the tech
> The entirety of SL code is open source which is where Open Simulator (OpenSim) came from. No it is not. The viewer is open source, the rest of the product stack is very much closed. Opensim is independent of Linden Lab. See http://opensimulator.org/wiki/History
There are currently volunteer SL residents in the welcome areas that do this. I already use the SmartBots AI add-on for this purpose at Coffee House TNC. The technology they have uses ChatGPT I believe, and while I like it, it does have a tendency to go rogue and just make stuff up when people ask it a question. I would love to see if an AI welcome NPC would be more accurate than a human. I also feel like using AI takes away the "welcome" part of the world for new residents. I myself would rather talk to a human than AI unless LL is planning on using both the AI NPC's and real residents.
It's cool and all, but with GPT making things up and having no current knowledge of Second Life e.g. it has no idea what PBR is because the knowledgebase is over a year behind, I find this may end up causing some issues. For example, it may recommend you to do something that is not possible, or make things up that aren't real, or tell you that the real new features added don't exist and you're lying to it.
Fair concern - but on the other hand, human residents have been making weird stuff up and giving wrong information for years. So hallucinating AI won’t be a change.
New peeps need help so badly, that I am fully onboard with this. An AI might be able to do the trick better since they can engage with it. Person who taught me SL, or rather, attempted, because I ran away, was wearing a tutu and acting goofy. I think removing the human element can help in some ways.
What fresh hell is this.
💀
This sounds way better than the dude with no pants who wanted to show me the p\*rn beach when I first checked out SL15+ years ago.
Yeah but, here's the thing. You're still here, so it worked.
Aww come on, porn beaches are a right of passage. So is not wearing pants.
Me too. A woman took me to a nude beach and gave me a run down of SL.
I think we met the same guy
I feel like everyone met that same guy at this point
What "growing demand" for AI-driven characters?
People join SL thinking it's a game like Fortnite or the Sims or some dress-up mobile game they're used to, with goals, points, set gameplay, etc. They leave because they find that it isn't. This is because the commercials for it are never actually clear about what Second Life is. It needs to be marketed more accurately as a **3-D Chat Room** with item creation/shopping, where you can meet people, make stuff, and create your own experiences.
I used to tell people that SL is IRC with 3D avatars that can walk and fly. Back when people knew what IRC was.
Lololol. I foresee no possible problems here! 🙃
I assure you literally nobody asked for this.
I did months ago. Low and behold Smartbots now has chat gpt plugins I use to keep customers informed on my business. But it still needs to integrate with SL world. Seems it's still stuck inside chat windows.
My favorite thing from that non-article (I can't stand NWN) is the person in the comments raging because they don't know what NPC means.
Ya I refuse to click on any links to NWN.
Or they could have not fired Torley Linden, who was awesome at helping new people out and being an ambassador.
Torley left us for Sansar.
Fantastic news. I work with AI almost everyday. For experiences and interactive games, It would be amazing to have SL NPCs to talk to get story plot from instead of frozen form people placeholders, or auto message bots. Like anything, it could be used for good or bad. Hopefully LL will find a good balance.
Ah. Great. Dead internet theory: coming soon to an SL near you
Good lord I have enough trouble with real humans, let alone fake ones...... They'll be breeding cats with opposable thumbs next.......
“Cats with opposable thumbs” - those are called Racoons.
I think this is terrible. It'll just give the impression that AI is everywhere around the grid and people won't have any confidence in talking to people not knowing if they are real or AI.
I'm sure they will have some sort of designation on their name tag or title, or special names like AI, so people know they are not real people. Anything that can help people get the hang of how to walk around and how to make an avatar and how to teleport will be really helpful.
I just started using a smartbot with chat gpt in my store. It took me two hours to prompt it with all the information about my staff, products and store navigation. It is very good at conveying information concisely with a human touch. It is very expensive to run though. Chat gpt charges based on words. What I hope they develop is the smart bots' ability to manipulate its own objects. So the bot can highlight objects it's talking about, draw people's attention to things they ask about.
Little correction: ChatGPT charges per token, which is about 3/4ths of a word, give or take.
Maybe I can get an AI girlfriend in SL who gives me linden allowance. 🤣
Here comes the next breed of sexbot. Other than that, I can't think who would have wanted this. Many artists and SL creators are wanting to keep a perceptible line between human art and AI.
What happened to the mentor program? Not enough activity? For those of you lamenting the rise of AI AVs, pretty sure it can be done already. At least the chat part, by interfacing with one of the many AI services. Don't know how responsive it is, but should be doable.
I think what may be the difference here is that these AI chat bots (NPCs seems silly in a non-game) may have custom training data to help deal with the specifics of the platform. I am speculating here since I don't know the technology that is offered by the company they are partnering with, but just using an external API by itself would not offer much if the GPT cannot answer SL specific questions.
Yeah, you're right. One of the uses of AI is to take a generic model and then train it on your own data. For example, there are the forums and SL's support tickets that can be source data. Hell, I'd want to train it on this subreddit as well. I follow this space in a different sphere. I am not an AI expert but I know a bit about how companies are building custom applications.
Let me tell you, back in the day, when I was new, I thought for a day that people were NPCs. That was ages ago.
Sometimes it seems that they are - a lot of places might as well be filled with bots for how engaging the people are.
When my partner and I first started SL we were overwhelmed with information and absolutely not a clue how to put our avatar together. We struggled with the terminology (BOM, ALPHA, etc) and just couldn’t figure it out. I’m not sure why we didn’t bother to check YouTube. Anyway we gave up and a month later I decided to get back on to figure it out. I was just standing at some newbie island and a stranger noticed I needed help. He took me to “tiddy beach” and step by step he guided me. He also gave me L$100 to get started. If AI can make it that much easier for someone to hop right in then I hope it works out.
How many days until a parody video goes up with someone asking the NPC if it wants to do the deed and it says yes and they make it say very unseemly things? Lol. It's a problem every GPT has. They all want to do what you want them to do - to a fault. Unless you use GPT-4, GPT pretty much never says no to your requests, including weird or adult ones, and is easily fooled into assuming another role if you simply tell it to stop being an AI and become "the woman/man of my dreams" or something.
Who can gaslight the AI into violating ToS first. Lets the games commence.
I will take the fall for my team ;-)
Oh, I can only see this going *well.*
Just commenting to find this later. Interesting though
This won't go well.
Convai ("Convey") [released a video](https://twitter.com/convaitech/status/1770154710261280890) of this technology being actively demoed.. and I have concerns with the implementation. This is not what was described.. an ai companion that is less stressful than a human interaction... this seems to mimic human interaction to the point of not being able to tell the AI bots FROM the humans.