A new ‘Dream Simulator’ game harnesses the power of ChatGPT to recreate people’s dreams in 3D — instantly.
The PC game called Project Electric Sheep uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 AI, with people typing what they dreamed about, then seeing the landscape come to life around them.
A voice asks, ‘What do you wish to dream about,’ then the player types in their choices and the game creates the world around them in 3D in seconds.
Users can move around inside their dreams using a mouse and interact and talk with the people in their dreams.
The game creates landscapes in 3D in response to text prompts
Users are asked, ‘What do you want to dream about?’
At recent demos at SXSW, users recreated dreams from a space wedding in Las Vegas, to recreating 80s East Berlin to partying on top of a mountain on Pluto using Project Electric Sheep.
Gadney said: ‘People were stunned. I think what people are expecting with ChatGPT is typing in prompts and trying to hack their high school essay or whatever.
‘But we’ve plugged it directly into a video game engine to create these worlds – and people are surprised that they can enter into their dreams. There’s a lot of astonishment.’
Games companies are rushing to update games with generative AI, using artificial intelligence to do everything from creating landscapes in games to creating ‘intelligent’ characters.
Gaming giant Ubisoft announced a new AI tool, Ghostwriter, which can automatically create scripts for non-player characters (NPCs).
Gadney says that Project Electric Sheep is intended as an art project – but that he believes AI will be a big part of the future of games.
The game creates strange landscapes
Users can interact with characters and move using a mouse
The dreams start when you approach the bed
An unfinished version of Project Electric Sheep is available free for PC via Steam Early Access, with a projected launch date in the second quarter of 2023.
‘There’s something very dreamlike about AI at the moment,’ says Guy Gadney, CEO and Co-Founder of Charisma.
‘The text is not perfect – and so that’s why we picked the idea of creating that dreamscape, I think is a good fit!’
Users simply type in their dream (with a variety of suggested dreams coming up as you type), and then the GPT-3 technology in the game generates landscapes and characters.
‘When you go into the game, the question is, ‘What do you wish to dream of?’ says Gadney.
You might type, ‘A castle in the middle of a field on a sunny day,’ then the game generates that description in 3D.
In The Kraken Wakes users can interact with AI-powered characters
In The Kraken Wakes users can interact with AI-powered characters
Gadney says that Project Electric Sheep isn’t quite as simple as plugging ChatGPT into a 3D game engine.
He says, ‘It’s building a layer between that that allows this stuff to come to life in interesting ways. The aim was to do something that no one has done before.’
Gadney’s London-based studio, Charisma.ai – is also developing an AI-powered game based on the classic novel The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham.
In the Kraken Wakes the AI allows players to talk to characters in the game in natural language – and have them respond, just like chatting to ChatGPT.
There are some scripted elements to ensure the story moves forward, Gadney says.
Gadney says, ‘It’s more fluid than the normal ‘forking path’ which you get in a videogame: the responses are a lot more naturally conversational.
‘The analogy we sometimes use is it’s like a skateboarding halfpipe, you know, where the story is going down the bottom, driven by tension and pace, and it has to move forward.
‘Forward movement is how we engage. But, you know, people can go up and down and have conversations about conspiracy theories, or whatever it is that they want.’
Gadney says that he believes games where people have unscripted conversations with AI will become popular – but says it will never replace scripted entertainment.
The team started work on Electric Sheep with OpenAI’s previous language model GPT-2, and plugged in GPT-3 when it came out.
‘As all this generative AI has emerged, we’ve been riding that wave and understanding it to see what we could do,’ Gadney says.
We want to push the technology creatively further than anyone else has pushed it. But I have no doubt that this sort of AI will have a huge impact on video games.’
Gadney says that he could imagine that Electric Sheep could help people engage with problematic dreams – in a ‘safe’ way on their PC.
He says, ‘Reliving the stress can be part of the cure, so if you’re reliving a dream, it could be a way of healing.’
