A patent filed by Sony over a year ago has resurfaced, and shows the company has ideas for an AI ‘ghost’ that could assist players if they get stuck in a game.
The aforementioned patent, which was recently noticed by allaboutAI and VGC, describes an “overlay” version of a player’s character. When in use, this overlay character would be able to demonstrate actions, such as how to solve a puzzle or by providing “example controller input button sequences”, which would in turn allow a player to then progress with the game.
In some cases, an AI ‘ghost’ could also have a conversation with the player’s character and give some “guidance or instruction” about what to do. Other times, the ghost could complete a section for the player. It sounds like an evolution of PlayStation’s Game Help on PS5, which offers users tips and guides via videos and images on screen.
An image within the patent also describes mode switching, which would encapsulate four different options for users to be able to choose from. These are: Story Mode, Combat Mode, Exploration Mode and Full Game Mode .
“Although video game technology has seen many advances, some players find themselves in need of assistance. Games become very complicated, so players who are not experts oftentimes quit playing or find it hard to complete tasks,” the filing reads. “Players are able to do research for the game or even look up prior gameplays on internet sites, but that process is time consuming and many times not very relevant to tasks and/or scenarios currently being encountered by the player.”
Should these AI Ghost helpers become a reality, it appears that they would be trained on existing footage of any given PlayStation game.
Assistance in games is, of course, nothing new. As I have already mentioned, the PS5 has Game Help, while Microsoft has its own Copilot AI feature.
Meanwhile, games more broadly often include a range of features to make them more accessible for as wide an audience as possible. This includes everything from adjustable difficulty levels to controller remapping, colour-blind modes and in-game hint systems (I personally quite liked the book that Guybrush had tucked away in Return to Monkey Island, but there are plenty of other examples out there).
As for AI, it remains an area of heated debate within the industry. In 2024, a report by Unity claimed 62 percent of studios using its tools used AI at some point during game development. In this report, Unity noted animation was the top use case. A GDC survey from that same year, meanwhile, said that around a third of industry workers reported using AI tools already. That number is now likely to be higher, and a more recent Tokyo Games Show survey reported over half of Japanese game companies are using AI in development.
Last year, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney said “AI will be involved in nearly all future production”, so having Steam games disclose whether they were built with AI makes about as much sense as telling us what kind of shampoo the developers use.
