Hey! Listen! New Minecraft AI guide offers tips while watching you play

Microsoft demo is like chatting with GameFAQs when you don't have a friend to hang with.

See full article...

 

[JustYourAverageJDP]

I dont want clippy telling me how much I suck at video games. Thanks.

 

[Cyrano4747]

Great, now my OS will tell me to git gud.

Hard pass, let me be terrible in peace.

 

[01001101]

Who is asking for this, Microsoft?

 

[Quasius]

I'm old enough to remember when game tips / secrets were passed around in school halls like social currency or read about in Nintendo Power. The Internet permanently killed that way of interacting with games. Is looking up web help now endangered? :/

 

[JustChilling]

I do not play games for someone else's benefit.

Also Microsoft seems really intent on killing their popular products just to prop their terrible investment in AI.

Edited to add: also otherwise second sentence sounds weird to me.

 

[Klinn]

Great, now my OS will tell me to git gud.

And after telling you you're doing it wrong, next CoPilot will play the proper move for you.

Hey, games that play themselves, just what I wanted. Although it would cut down my Steam backlog, so there's that.

 

[thrillgore]

I'm old enough to remember when game tips / secrets were passed around in school halls like social currency or read about in Nintendo Power. The Internet permanently killed that way of interacting with games. Is looking up web help now endangered? :/

Endangered? Its on the brink of extinction. https://www.axios.com/2024/05/17/google-openai-ai-generative-publishers

 

[papito10]

Finally, AI is solving existential problems for humanity.

 

[MedicinalGoat]

Who is asking for this, Microsoft?

Some Microsoft executive wants to bond with their kid using Minecraft but they're so bad at it the kid doesn't want to participate? A few e-mails later...

 

[hambone]

Not gonna lie, almost all these AI tools are dumber than a pile of bricks -- but at least this one could be dumb and entertaining. It would be pretty funny if I can do something like "Hey Copilot narrate my Minecraft session as if you were the foul-mouthed hot-headed character of Tommy played by Joe Pesci in Goodfellas"

 

[Exnor]

Lol. I don't think so MS.
I kinda don't like being stalked or spied on.

 

[MedicinalGoat]

I'm old enough to remember when game tips / secrets were passed around in school halls like social currency or read about in Nintendo Power. The Internet permanently killed that way of interacting with games. Is looking up web help now endangered? :/

I felt a great disturbance, as if millions of uncles working at Nintendo suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

 

[Fuzzypiggy]

Tell me what I'm doing wrong?

I'm 52, still playing video games after 40 years, when ideally I should be outside getting some exercise to try to burn off the waist-land spread before I die from a stroke!

There MS, I don't need Copilot to tell me the bloody obvious!

 

[pyth]

I generally hate this, especially for a game like Minecraft, but having a live guide for a game like OSRS could actually be interesting. Especially given how many prerequisites exist for mid game content and how easy it is to succumb to paralysis by analysis in that game.

 

[Happy Medium]

And after telling you you're doing it wrong, next CoPilot will play the proper move for you.

Hey, games that play themselves, just what I wanted. Although it would cut down my Steam backlog, so there's that.

Well, apparently the plan is for AI to also date for you, so I think the general goal is just for us to lie back and die alone and unneeded while our AI assistants live happy and fulfilled lives playing games and going on romantic excursions with other AI. After all, who needs humans when Microsoft/Google/Apple have trained AI to do everything humans are able to do without any of those pesky things like needing to eat, sleep, get paid, or have rights? /s?

 

[CrimsonEldritch]

I don't like where this is headed. Sure, it's Minecraft for now, but if Microsoft just turns this on for all games you play on a PC, then I will no longer maintain a Windows machine solely for the purpose of playing my Steam library.

 

[Hoptimist]

I remember some Ars articles on game design (ex. Civ) where the designers would sacrifice realism (for the AI opponent) for a less frustrating experience to avoid pissing off the user. I can see these AI pals feeding the user with exactly what they want to hear. The better to facilitate 'engagement' with the AI. Do we end up making actual humans too frustrating to deal with since the AI 'understands' us better? Breeding dependence on AI seems to be the order of the day.

 

[whoisit]

The more I hear about AI, and how every company wants to integrate it into their products, the creepier it becomes.

 

[Mustachioed Copy Cat]

How does Microsoft propose to make this experience authentic if the AI can’t call you a secretly-adopted, dog-fucking [RACIST REDACTION] whose mother has an OnlyFans specializing in [UNCONDITIONAL REDACTION]?

Like, if the AI can’t casually mention your poor performance is probably a result of your mother being a crack whore, how will we be belittled and eventually drop the game, our last refuge of joy poisoned by people whose own damage nearly overlaps the last remnants of our confidence?

 

[IncorrigibleTroll]

Microsoft's engineers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could [reinvent the annoying backseat gamer], they didn't stop to think if they should.

 

[olePigeon]

I only want this feature if it sounds like Weird Al.

 

[Sysop-Delco]

Part of the potential for this could be in accessibility (IE: blind/visually impaired), having an AI assistant on hand to help with navigation and environment interaction could prove quite useful in helping to make more mainstream games more approachable. Course, whether it works out that way or not remains to be seen.

 

[IncorrigibleTroll]

I only want this feature if it sounds like Weird Al.

Given the envisioned usage, it really needs to sound like Comic Book Guy to be thematically consistent.

 

[Program_024]

You know, with all the hype that I have been seeing around AI and also seeing companies shoehorn its use for applications it doesn't really have any value for, I can't help but think of the original Portal game.

Aperture Science was competing against Black Mesa for some kind of government contract for a gas line antifreeze system. Aperture's product?

GlaDOS.

Given how this timeline is going, I'm almost expecting a GlaDOS-like system to come about. While I don't think AI is going to suddenly turn sarcastic, vengeful, and slightly murderous, I can't help but feel that bad things will happen as companies blindly throw AI into everything.

 

[ip_what]

Everyone’s dunking on this, but it seems way easier than my approach to being told that I’m playing Minecraft badly—have a baby, feed, clothe and support it for 9 years.

 

[UserIDAlreadyInUse]

And after telling you you're doing it wrong, next CoPilot will play the proper move for you.

Hey, games that play themselves, just what I wanted. Although it would cut down my Steam backlog, so there's that.

"What game should we play next?"
"Hmm...I'm kinda feeling like a game of chess, Copilot."
"How about Global Thermonuclear War?"
"No, I'd prefer chess."
"Launching Global Thermonuclear War. Looking for opponent. Found an opponent in Moscow. Beginning game..."

 

[Deleted member 545801]

Who is asking for this, Microsoft?

Not sure if anyone was strictly asking for it, but I can see this being useful to gamers with disabilities. They get some of the experience of the full game and can go through at their own pace, which is more rewarding IMO than just watching a Let's Play. It tracks with their disability-friendly Xbox initiatives over the last few years as well.

 

[fellow human]

Everyone’s dunking on this, but it seems way easier than my approach to being told that I’m playing Minecraft badly—have a baby, feed, clothe and support it for 9 years.

yeah who needs a child when you’ve got… Microsoft?

It seems all the tracking and data collection we’ve been subjected to for the last quarter century is going to seem quaint compared to the future. Screw all the subterfuge, now “we’re going to literally watch everything you do” is being sold as a feature.

Hell. No.

 

[train_wreck]

Well, apparently the plan is for AI to also date for you, so I think the general goal is just for us to lie back and die alone and unneeded while our AI assistants live happy and fulfilled lives playing games and going on romantic excursions with other AI. After all, who needs humans when Microsoft/Google/Apple have trained AI to do everything humans are able to do without any of those pesky things like needing to eat, sleep, get paid, or have rights? /s?

Not sure if the /s is necessary …

 

[IncorrigibleTroll]

Everyone’s dunking on this, but it seems way easier than my approach to being told that I’m playing Minecraft badly—have a baby, feed, clothe and support it for 9 years.

If you're trying to git gud, you really went about it the wrong way. Also, I think 9 years is on the low end.

 

[electric_mayhem]

I don't like the recent trend of AI tools designed to mimic human interactions to make people happy and tell them what they want to hear. A huge amount of people already have a stunted ability to interact with one another. We do not need to accelerate that by giving people personal echo-chambers and ego-strokers so they can further withdraw from society.

 

[Dachannien]

Factorio version:

"Your factory isn't growing fast enough"

 

[DeschutesCore]

Because after decades of buying newer, faster, better, I wanna spare a bunch of cycles to tell on myself.

Nah, I'm all set. Thanks anyways.

 

[ip_what]

I dont want clippy telling me how much I suck at video games. Thanks.

In the next Halo, clippy will manifest and teabag you when you do some thing particularly dumb.

 

[onlysublime]

I think people are seeing the trees rather than the forest. The purpose wasn't to show you that you can have a gamefaq running for a gamer. It was a demo to show how AI could recognize what was happening on the screen and could give advice based on live action rather than photos and audio clips. To go beyond text prompts. Right now, you see Google's Gemini identifying the wrong flower in a picture. And that's with a static picture that was analyzed. But if you progress to the next step and interpret moving video, that's big. If it works. Which is a big if.

this would only work on a PC since for this to be effective you need a processor like the NPU of the next gen CPUs like Qualcomm's or the upcoming AMD and Intel ones. otherwise, there would be significant lag as information is passed back and forth from the cloud. the speed was so effective which makes me wonder whether this can really work with the current state of NPUs.

 

[chanman819]

Who is asking for this, Microsoft?

People looking for social interaction (like cooperative gaming) sans other people, I imagine. My worry isn't that this is a feature Microsoft is pushing out that no one wants. My worry is about how many people silently want it/similar features in other places.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/nowornever/first-person-ai-love-1.7205538

 

[IncorrigibleTroll]

There are some game genres (cough MOBAs cough) where it would make sense to build this technology into the tutorial so that prospective players have a better idea what to expect when they start playing on public servers.

 

[Teamsprocket]

I'm old enough to remember when game tips / secrets were passed around in school halls like social currency or read about in Nintendo Power. The Internet permanently killed that way of interacting with games. Is looking up web help now endangered? :/

Don't tell my 9 year old. He still gets game secrets from his school halls like the olden days

 

[pbcheese]

How the fuck can you play Minecraft wrong?