AI NPCs

An AI NPC is a non-player character whose dialogue, and sometimes its actions, is generated by a language model during play instead of being scripted in advance. Working systems usually pair the model with conventional game AI. In a June 25, 2026, Q&A on NVIDIA's developer blog, Krafton's Hyunseung Kim and Yujeong Son explain that in PUBG Ally a behavior tree runs fast reactions such as movement and combat at the game's tick rate, while a 2-billion-parameter language model on the player's own GPU handles planning, coordination and speech. They say quantizing the model lets it fit alongside the game on GPUs with as little as 8GB of VRAM, and that Ally checks the live game state through tool calls rather than trusting what it said earlier in the match.

Cloud services bill by use: Inworld's pricing page lists pay-as-you-go text-to-speech at $25 per million characters and speech recognition at $0.15 an hour. Voices also come with rules. TheWrap reported that the video game contract SAG-AFTRA members ratified on July 9, 2025, requires studios to get a performer's written consent before using AI on their voice or likeness, and pays at least 7.5 times minimum scale when a replica voice is used for dialogue generated in real time.

Our AI NPCs guide covers the full pipeline, the SDKs and the games that use them.