[This short Game Rant story describes a recent Warner Bros. patent submission for a social robot in video games (but logically soon for embodied robots) that analyzes “a person’s nonverbal social cues to detect things like emotional states and desires” and then interacts with the user based on this information, enhancing their medium-as-social-actor presence experience. Of course, as the story notes, the technology suggests dangers as well. You can see a second image in the original story and read the patent application at Patentscope. –Matthew]
Warner Bros. Working on Virtual Robot to Interact with Players in Video Games
By Chris Drumm
December 21, 2022
Warner Bros. Entertainment has published a patent it submitted internationally, and this patent is for a social robot design that could improve video game interactions with human players. However, the patent design could also apply to much more than entertainment.
For years now, programmers have designed increasingly sophisticated AI systems that can respond to human input. Digital assistants like Siri and Alexa can respond to voice commands in a variety of languages and accents, and chat AIs can simulate a real conversation in text chat, at least to some extent. The goal of this new Warner Bros. patent seems to be to take these social robots to the next step.
According to the patent, “Social Robot with Environmental Control Feature,” the robot that Warner Bros. is developing would be able to use a camera to analyze a person’s nonverbal social cues to detect things like emotional states and desires. The robot could then connect to a smart display to play a video clip, connect to smart appliances to brew coffee or change a room’s lighting, or tell a game’s AI to respond appropriately.
For instance, if the social robot senses that its user is tired, it could start the coffee maker or suggest that the user go to bed if it’s late. If the user is sad, it could dim the lights and play a video clip of rain sounds. Or if a game player gets annoyed at a character but doesn’t say anything, the social robot could detect this and have the annoying character back off or calm down.
A social robot that can read nonverbal social cues seems to be a natural progression from what AI can already do. Direct communication through text and speech is growing more sophisticated by the day, and so the next logical step is to develop robots that can understand expressions, tones, gestures, and other ways humans share information without using words. In fact, the patent mentions it could also work for “other social animals,” which means Warner Bros. may license its design for animal studies and zoos.
On the other hand, this patent also provides fuel for people who worry that technology is getting too intrusive. The goal of this design is a social robot that can learn enough about its user to do what they want even before they ask for it, and there’s no guarantee that this robot would be the only one getting this information. Still, it will likely be years before social robots like this will reach consumer apps, games, or homes.