SonySony is experimenting with AI-powered characters, which would let players hold conversations with PlayStation characters like Horizon’s Aloy.
Over the last several years, AI and what it means for creativity has loomed large over the gaming industry. Companies like PlayStation have already started addressing the topic at length.
For example, the CEO of PlayStation’s Studio Business Group, Hermen Hulst, previously predicted in a BBC interview that there may someday exist “a dual demand in gaming: one for AI-driven innovative experiences and another for handcrafted, thoughtful content.”
Plus, patents have shown that Sony is interested in baking AI into quality-of-life features, with one such filing in February 2025 detailing an AI assistant that would provide players with in-game guidance via tips from characters like Aloy in Horizon Forbidden West. Now there’s video showing exactly what this will entail.
PlayStation takes next step with AI experiments
The Verge received a tip from an anonymous source who shared video proof of Sony’s experiments with “AI-powered PlayStation characters.” (Note, the video previously appeared on YouTube but has since been copyright claimed.)
Sharwin Raghoebardajal, the Director of Software Engineering at SIE, narrates the footage developed by PlayStation Studios Advanced Technology Group. The footage itself shows a tech demo of an AI-powered Aloy conversing with Raghoebardajal.
At one point in the video, Raghoebardajal asks Aloy how she’s feeling and receives an answer through voice and facial expressions synthesized by AI. The AI-driven Aloy then explains a bit about her backstory, sharing how she’s a clone of Elisabet Sobeck.
Related
SonyThis functionality has been tested in Horizon Forbidden West as well. Later in the video, Raghoebardajal asks Aloy’s in-game model about her current location. After a few seconds, the AI Aloy responds: “we’re at the Scalding Spear, a settlement in the desert known for its impressive merchant storefronts…”
Raghoebardajal notes that the technology is a prototype built in conjunction with Horizon creator Guerrilla Games and is being used to demonstrate its various functions internally at Sony.
The Technology Group shared the first version of the tech demo during GDC in 2024, then showed it behind-closed-doors at STEF (Tokyo-based Sony technology fair) that December. Notably, the video above is an updated version of the demo.
Raghoebardajal added that the video doesn’t mean to answer questions about the value of talking to Aloy when players should be playing, it’s merely a “glimpse of what is possible.”
