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Ubisoft Reveals Game With Voice-Controlled, AI-Powered Teammates
Me and my bot buds // Illustration by Kate Walker
Ubisoft debuted a new game that lets players control generative AI companions with their voices.
Why It Hits: Like every form of entertainment, gaming is feeling the impact of AI — and the response from players has been mixed. While Ubisoft insists that humans are still driving the development of these features, how gamers react to the actual gameplay will ultimately determine whether these AI additions roll out across the company’s slate.
Behind The Gameplay: Ubisoft’s Teammates seems to be the first video game where you can play alongside AI.
The first-person shooter leverages the Snowdrop engine and Google Gemini to power its AI characters — a concept Ubisoft calls “generative play.”
That includes “Jasper” — an in-game assistant that can adjust your settings or surface lore — and “Pablo” and “Sofia,” characters who play alongside you and can even riff off each other.
The characters are all controlled via voice command — kind of like yelling at your buddies on Xbox Live during multiplayer tournaments.
Last Boss: Ubisoft’s director of gameplay GenAI, Xavier Manzanares, says the goal is to make gamers “feel like a leader,” while narrative director Virginie Mosser adds that the features are meant to “give AI meaning,” not replace the work humans do.
The game isn’t publicly available yet. Instead, Ubisoft has launched a closed playtest with a few hundred gamers to work out the tweaks and acquire feedback before a potential wider rollout.
Next Release: If the features in Teammates are imbued into Ubisoft’s slate, the age-old practice of having your friend read you the guidebook while you play may go the way of… well… physical guidebooks.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.