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For me, the holy grail of gaming involves characters driven by AI that could pass the Turing test, and who could trigger changes in the game world according to your unscripted conversations with them and/or their own decisions.

The first half of that dream is already being developed for different games thanks to the astonishing AI of GPT-4. Check out the progress done for the undying Skyrim (its VR version no less, for added immersion):

These conversations are character-appropriate, so the video is much more impressive if, like me, you’ve known all these characters for about twelve years. The voice generation can be plugged to Eleven Labs’ API for more realistic results, although that would burn plenty of the monthly allowed credits.

Here’s another video of this technology in Skyrim, now using Eleven Labs’ voices:

I love how Ysolda admits to being a drug dealer right in the middle of Whiterun’s market. And what’s with that town guard abusing metaphors?

Here’s more or less the same kind of stuff but with a human being acting like a bastard toward Fallout: New Vegas characters:

The following video is an overview of this technology applied to Skyrim (and other games in general), along with its possibilities and limitations.