Second Life's New AI Character Creator Creates Sharply Divided Community Reaction Related to the Very Nature of the Virtual World

Linden Lab unveiled the latest version of its AI Character Designer late yesterday (website here, login required), created in partnership with Convai AI -- watch the demo on YouTube above. To judge by social media, the SL community reaction has been, well, contentious.

Here's a sample of YouTube comments:

So this looks like a nice feature, and just what I need for my land.

This is a game changer! We can't even imagine how it will influence the experience we'll soon have in Second Life! 🤓 Awesome work!

... and here's a sample from /SecondLife in a post with the somewhat negative title:

Eat your SLop™" - LL releases a new "How to make AI Bots" video on their official channel... a video that is itself written and voiced by AI.

wow i hate this

f*** this, give us better ways to socialise

Might as well play The Sims at that point.

That last comment is quite trenchant actually, speaking to a sharp divide between the Second Life community who see the virtual world as primarily a human-to-human socialization platform -- and others who interact with it more as a kind of spicier version of a life simulator game. (And roughly generalized, oldbie SLers tend to fall in the former category, while new-ish users who discovered SL on YouTube and other social media fall into the latter.)

I touched on this topic in my recent interview with Philip Rosedale and Brad Oberwager:

Philip Rosedale: Because, the question of, “Under what conditions do you want to talk to an AI as an avatar in Second Life?” I mean, I don't know, this is a very interesting conversation. In some ways, more avatars are good, and it costs us more… in some ways, more avatars, to the extent that they're boring to interact with, or take you away from real people, they’re bad. 

Wagner James Au: That's been a problem from the design aspect, that Second Life is not presented as a traditional MMO. Because traditional MMOs have NPCs, and they are quest givers, or they'll give you rewards, and so you interact with them with that in mind.

But within Second Life, you're expected to meet other people. I mean, in SL, there's been all kinds of bots forever, but that's a constant complaint from  users. You know: “I saw all these green dots [on the map], and thought it was a party, but it's just bots.” So I think the problem is getting worse. 

And I think on a larger level, in Silicon Valley, they don't realize that adding AI to a virtual world, it doesn't really add any value. There's not any proven value beyond how we already know it, as either NPCs or, you know, for procedural generation. So I'm really afraid that this is going down the wrong path. 

PR: Yeah, but like you said, like Brad said, the AI horse is out of the barn, in the sense that people already have, like you said, in MMOs historically, people have basically really bad AI, which is just a quest giver. And that's how you interact with NPCs. Which, which we all, as gamers, know. And so, I think the trick is, the bar is pretty low, we just need to kind of climb up the hill from there, right? 

Much more here. As with AI and content creation, the emergence of LLM-powered NPC technology is very much a horse that's not just wandered out of the barn, but is now running loose in a hospital. 

I plan on discussing these topics further with Linden Lab soon, so if you have questions I should be sure to ask, please post in Comments!

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Comments

[wsa]

Gah. "Yeah, but like you said, like Brad said, the AI horse is out of the barn" Saying "there is no choice" is the cry of someone who has no ideas and is just following the herd. This seems pure Silicon Valley FOMO.

[Haridsam]

James, three key points you brought up:

1. "But within Second Life, you're expected to meet other people."

2. "[...] a constant complaint from users. You know: 'I saw all these green dots [on the map], and thought it was a party, but it's just bots.' So I think the problem is getting worse."

3. "[...] adding AI to a virtual world, it doesn't really add any value. [...] So I'm really afraid that this is going down the wrong path."

I, and probably everyone I know in SL, would 110% agree with these. What is the rationale for incorporating AI NPCs? What's the value? Just because the tech is available isn't any reason to use it -- none whatever. The bots we already have to put up with as owners try to lure us into empty sims shouldn't even show as green dots (on the map), but be clearly distinguishable as bots, maybe hollow white dots. SL is not a game. AI characters don't belong in SL, and nobody wants them. It's a terrible idea.

[Adeon Writer]

Not only is this depressingly sad, and the exact opposite of what the platform needs (it's hard enough to find real people to connect with), for me personally, the dive into AI crosses the Rubicon. That's a line crossed I can't tolerate.

[Whimsical Aristocrat]

Interesting comments - and my initial thoughts were negative as well. I can see AI Bots playing useful roles in adventure or quest sims - one imagines they will also appear in all sorts of roles such as store concierge, or in adult sims.

And none of that really bothers me **so long as they are identifiable** - different colour on maps, maybe different colour floating tag. I am aware clubs and events seek to increase their visibility and ratings by populating their sims with non-playing avatars as it is, so I'd love to be able to more easily identify those, as well as the ai bots they will likely become.