Amid a riotous AI hype cycle, companies are promising that their agentic AIs will —eventually, at least — do everything from your grocery shopping to booking your travel plans.
And what’ll you do with all that extra leisure time? Kick back and play some video games? Or will you deploy yet another AI to play the games for you, while you passively watch like the slack-jawed humans in “WALL-E”?
It might sound like parody, but Japanese tech giant Sony is looking to do exactly that: let an AI navigate PlayStation games on the human player’s behalf. According to a patent filed in September 2024 and surfaced by Video Games Chronicle, the company has plans for a “Ghost Player” that takes over the player’s character to puppet out the solution if they get stuck.
According to the patent, gamers would choose between a “Guide Mode” that shows an AI presenting the proper way forward or a “Complete Mode” that would simply assume control over the player’s character and play the whole thing on their behalf.
It’s an eyebrow-raising example of how companies are looking to use AI to essentially remove human agency, under the guise of making our lives easier. Gamers have turned to walkthroughs and hints for years, but usually after banging their own heads against difficult challenges, and hence learning something in the process.
Technically, accessibility options in video games are nothing new. Many modern titles allow gamers to adjust difficulty on the fly or even skip certain sections if things get too tricky. Sony’s PlayStation 5 console also has a Game Help system, which provides players with easily-accessed guides and hints mid-game.
Adding AI to that paradigm is clearly of interest to the gaming industry. Last year, Microsoft already introduced an Xbox “AI-driven sidekick,” called Copilot for Gaming, that can coach gamers to improve their skills. However, the large language model-based feature is limited to voice and text prompts.
On a broader scale, the use of AI in the video game industry has proven incredibly controversial. Many gamers have reacted with disgust to game studios using AI for creative tasks, like coming up with promotional artwork or generating character voices.
Nonetheless, company leaders like Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney have vowed to use AI in “nearly all future production.”
Whether companies will go as far as to introduce AI agents that play video games on behalf of players remains to be seen — but considering Sony’s patent, they’re certainly already thinking about it.
Gamers aren’t exactly optimistic about AI encroaching on the experience, especially amid deep confusion over how exactly developers and studios are looking to leverage the tech. In a piece for The Gamer, journalist Mike Drucker predicted that 2026 will be the “year that AI in gaming gets super annoying.”
More on AI and video games: We’re Laugh-Crying at This Footage of an AI-Generated Video Game
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