Sony’s New AI-Generated Game Tutorials Raise Concerns Among Gamers

Tutorials can often feel like a necessary evil in the gaming world. Teaching players how to navigate a game can be surprisingly tricky. Even when developers create engaging and informative tutorials, there’s no guarantee that players will find them, engage with them, or absorb the information. Just think about the last time you actually utilized the PlayStation 5’s built-in Game Help feature. Exactly. This might explain why Sony is looking into innovative ways to enhance player guidance, this time through AI.

A recent patent from Sony, dating back to April, has caught attention for its intriguing concept. The patent introduces the idea of “ghost assistance,” where a game session connects to an AI engine that generates a “ghost character.” This character essentially guides players through specific challenges in the game.

According to the patent, “The interactive actions by the ghost character are configured to progress the ghost character along an interactive path of the game.” It appears that players will need to activate a specific mode for this feature to work, allowing them to opt out of seeing random ghosts offering advice.

Players will have control over the level of assistance the ghost AI provides. It could offer an overlay showing what actions to take or demonstrate the exact button inputs needed to advance. The ghost can engage in interactive conversations using natural language, similar to chatting with AI like Grok. Plus, the ghost can perform tasks on behalf of the player when needed.

It’s important to note that while Sony frequently mentions “AI,” this doesn’t necessarily imply that the feature will resemble the controversial technology behind systems like ChatGPT. However, the patent’s language suggests a sophisticated approach. Sony indicates that the AI will be trained using a variety of gameplay footage to analyze live sessions and provide contextual help. This footage could come from previous playthroughs by other users, both within and outside the network, as well as relevant online content like social media posts or website descriptions. The patent also mentions that the game engine could be distributed across multiple processing units in a data center.

Another interesting aspect is that the ghost can take on various forms. “The ghost character can be represented as a character from a movie, a character figure from another game, or a user-generated character,” the patent states. Additionally, the AI model can “continuously” learn from game scenarios presented by other sources as the player progresses.

To illustrate how this might work, the patent provides an example:

Imagine the ghost character as an animated version of Yoda from Star Wars. Yoda could not only demonstrate interactive moves for specific game scenarios but also communicate verbally with the player character. This ghost assistance could combine actions performed by the ghost with verbal cues or gestures visible to the player during gameplay. If Yoda provides verbal guidance, his visual representation would respond accordingly.

The patent also explores the possibility of the AI tracking the player’s gaze or using a camera to capture images of the player’s real-world environment. While this raises some privacy concerns, it’s worth remembering that a patent doesn’t guarantee implementation. Patents often outline a range of possibilities that may never materialize in the final product. This 2025 patent is an evolution of a previous one filed in 2023. If something like the AI ghost ever comes to fruition, it might not be until the next generation of consoles arrives. Given the current state of graphics cards and memory chips, it seems new consoles may not be on the horizon anytime soon.

Still, it’s a bit unsettling to think about the potential for someone to use resources in a way that feels excessive, just to watch a popular streamer tackle a game like Cuphead.