Hugo Boss lands on Roblox to promote new denim-inspired clothing line

Roblox looks towards “4D generative AI” future

With avatar auto-set-up, texture generator, code assist, and Roblox assistant, we’re making it so anyone can create anything on the Roblox platform, and the only limit is their own creativity. Roblox is enhancing its colorful online platform with generative AI to improve user safety and inclusivity through features like automated chat filters and real-time text translation. Anupam Singh, VP of AI and growth engineering at Roblox, explores how AI coding assistants are helping creators focus more on creative expression. As for how the tech works, it “tokenizes” the 3D blocks from the wide range of in-game worlds created by users in Roblox and interprets the blocks as things that can be assigned a numerical value.

If you consider that generative AI may be adopted for both game development and to support real-time in-game features, the obvious conclusion is that gaming may become a large market for AI inference jobs. This means it needs to build a fast and scalable moderation flow for all types of creation. Roblox stands apart as a platform with a robust creator-backed marketplace and economy, and it must extend that to support in-experience user-creators as well as AI algorithm developers, he said. Even more powerful, the convergence of media supported by generative AI will allow creators to develop integrated 3D objects that come with behavior built in. For example, a creator could design a car through a simple statement such as “A red, two seater, convertible sports car with front-wheel drive”.

Stay updated on the ABCs of Tech – the latest advancements in Artificial Intelligence, Big Tech, and Cybersecurity with our daily news roundup. Roblox deployed a large model (now considered a small model) called Bert back in 2020. Today, Roblox supports a billion inference calls a day and is in the process of replacing Bert with a larger model, said Anupam Singh, an engineer at Roblox. The other big challenge Comcast has observed is around evaluating responses, she added. The metrics used to evaluate natural language processing responses have fallen flat, so Comcast still relies primarily on humans evaluating responses right now, although it is actively exploring how to automate that, Mahajanam added.

To help creators understand how discovery works, he said the company is sharing its commitment to open and transparent insight into search and discovery on Roblox. Baszucki said Roblox wants to help developers connect with their communities and make it possible for them to manage their communities from one place. To this end, the company is sharing that Roblox Groups is being rebranded as Roblox Communities. Reach for Roblox games can exceed that of Among Us, Elden Ring and more, he said. For more, including how to unlock the new dashboards, head over to the Roblox dev forum.

Roblox Studio head Stefano Corazza, who joined the company in 2022 after leading Adobe’s augmented reality division, is steering the platform’s ambitious AI strategy. The lack of 3D data can create weird situations, where objects appear in unusual places—a tree in the middle of your racetrack, for example. To get around this issue, Roblox will use a second AI model that has been trained on more plentiful 2D data, pulled from open-source and licensed data sets, to check the work of the first one. Roblox plans to roll out a generative AI tool that will let creators make whole 3D scenes just using text prompts, it announced today. Other luxury fashion labels, including Gucci, have flocked to Roblox to stay on the leading edge of tech. Marketing on Roblox is typically linked to the metaverse, though that term has fallen out of vogue in the past year as executives turn their attention to generative artificial intelligence.

Roblox Assistant

I’m very excited about evolving Assistant into a true platform for any new functionality people want to add to Roblox Studio or to any experience. From chatbots dishing out illegal advice to dodgy AI-generated search results, take a look back over the year’s top AI failures. Roblox is also interested in becoming a bigger destination for commerce, which has helped attract partners like Hugo Boss. Over 1.6 billion virtual items were sold on Roblox in the first three quarters of 2023, a representative said. Still, Roblox has continued to expand its services targeted at advertisers.

And if you’re passionate about AI’s impact on games, check outthe AI Gamechangers archive for more in-depth Q&As with innovators like Guy Gadney (Charisma) and Yassine Tahi (Kinetix), with new insights arriving weekly. We see AI translation as crucial to breaking down barriers on Roblox and bringing the community closer together. The rate at which people can add functionality to Assistant is much faster than coding any bespoke functionality from scratch.

• Roblox is also working on a tool to generate custom 3D avatars from images that can be imported and customized.
• And about $893.5 million was generated in revenue in Q2 2024, up 31% year-over-year.
• Roblox is standing by the notion that it is building a platform that will enable every user to be a creator – not just those comfortable with Roblox Studio and other 3D content creation tools.
• Roblox announced a new conversational AI assistant at its 2023 Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) that can help creators more easily make experiences for the popular social app.

The same goes for how Roblox Assistant supports creators learning to navigate the platform and code with the help of its text-to-object creation tools. McGuire also touches on the ethical use of AI, how it acts as a supplement to creativity, not a replacement, and shares some insight into the future for the platform. The popular online gaming platform developed a custom natural language processing model to power the translations.

The difference is that Roblox Assistant is optimized for Roblox’s domain-specific needs. Roblox designed Assistant for fluid, collaborative creation via back-and-forth dialogue. Roblox Assistant will allow users to swiftly test out ideas while providing feedback for refinement. The AI can help users learn to use Roblox, acting as a tutor speaking conversationally, without relying on very technical language.

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In both cases, we see a future in which even a beginner can get a running head start as they look to bring their imagination to life in a Roblox experience, he said. Between Roblox Connect’s cross-platform avatar chat calling and all that generative AI, it’s a lot to take in, especially for me (a dad who watches his kid play Roblox all the time, but never dives in much himself). Then again, I’ve lived in a number of virtual worlds that have slowly vanished, including Microsoft’s shuttered AltSpace VR and PlayStation’s Dreams. And I see my kid playing Roblox all the time while also talking with his friends on FaceTime (Roblox Connect will be limited to ages 13 and up, but much like Meta’s VR age limits, I’m curious how many kids will end up chatting on parent accounts).

Corazza demonstrated how natural language gets translated into code by using Code Assist to change the color of an orb to red and then destroy it 0.3 seconds after a player touches it and surround the first orb with a grid of other orbs. Referencing earlier code describing the first orb, Code Assist wrote code to add new orbs and adjust how it reacts to player interaction. The tool doesn’t work without other code to call on but can aid in filling in the details or at least more repetitive aspects of coding. “Even things like VR and AR will flourish, will really have like a second wave. Because now people can do stuff in those worlds and they can be much faster. I think that’s going to be a big game-changer.”

I want to highlight that we have 70 machine learning training stacks right now. We have trained, for example, our own translation model with one billion parameters. This is the model that helps auto-translate all experiences when a creator makes them. And the range of verticals that we have live right now, we’ve mentioned material generation and code generation have shipped. “So, all of a sudden we’ve created the ability for all the creators and experiences to have calling cards all over them, that you could use to create this web of supply chain and demand.” It’s part of a multilevel approach to expanding the popular platform beyond games.

Mark Riedl, a professor at Georgia Tech who also specializes in AI and games, says that just as generative AI can cause unpredictable and problematic web search results, it could potentially cause games to misbehave. “Game developers are generally very conservative and want guarantees about the quality of player experience,” he says. The companies acknowledge that their version of Minecraft is a little wonky. The resolution is quite low, you can only play for minutes at a time, and it’s prone to hallucinations like the one described above. But they believe that with innovations in chip design and further improvements, there’s no reason they can’t develop a high-fidelity version of Minecraft, or really any game. As a fast follow, Roblox plans to experiment with including regional pricing recommendations.

Roblox is rolling out in-experience subscriptions, but you can’t buy them yet

“Heaven knows what our creators will build with those tools as AR devices are coming on.” Roblox is starting to look like the type of massive metaverse platform that could be a place where, maybe, more virtual theater is staged, or meetings, or who knows what else. Being increasingly cross-platform, and full of expanding creative tools, and being VR-capable — all that sounds promising. “With generative AI, we think we can make it way easier to create these complicated objects,” Nick Tornow, VP of engineering for Roblox’s Creator Group, said in a conversation with CNET.

Unsurprisingly, more than a few modern games have gone out of their way to promise a lived-in world where you can make your own decisions. This is similar to the idea of the Holodeck in Star Trek, but on a flat screen or in a VR environment. The new connectivity comes in the form of empowered communication – namely an AI real-time chat translator with 16 language options.

Roblox is about to let users sell custom-made avatar bodies and heads

AI-powered NPCs that don’t need a script could make games—and other worlds—deeply immersive. It brings them strong word-of-mouth growth, brand affinity, higher user tolerance for issues, deeper levels of usage and engagement, as well as a lower risk of platform churn. “We see an incredible opportunity to build generative AI tools and APIs focused on Roblox,” he said. Roblox isn’t actively in VR and AR yet, although Corazza says the company’s exploring many different types of platforms. But it’s pretty clear that these beginning steps for generative AI in 3D worlds are going to make a big impact on the metaverse, VR and AR soon enough. Unfortunately, creators won’t be able to use Roblox Assistant right away, as Sturman said that the tool is going to launch at the end of this year or early next year.

The game was created from clips and keyboard inputs alone, as a demo for real-time interactive video generation. Meta released its speech-to-text and text-to-text translator, SeamlessM4T, which handles nearly 100 languages. Google’s Universal Speech Model also translates around 100 languages and is already deployed on YouTube to translate captions. Experiences selling at $9.991, $29.991, $49.991 will receive 50%, 60%, and 70% revenue share, respectively. The company will roll this out for people to purchase on desktop this year, with plans tolater expand to other supported devices.

The Assistant also boosts the generative AI coding aide and text-to-object creation tools Roblox debuted in March. The Assistant has more ways to explain, refine, and debug scripts than the Roblox Code Assist released at the time. Roblox is even enlisting creators to provide anonymized script samples to improve Assistant’s coding abilities. Participants will get access to enhanced versions trained on the community data. The translation continues Roblox’s integration of AI into its services, especially features employing large language models like the Roblox Assistant, a generative AI conversational chatbot tailored to Roblox’s workflows, lingo, and data. Roblox designed Assistant for fluid, collaborative creation via back-and-forth dialogue, something that extra languages will definitely enhance.

So more realistically, I imagine it would be used to build one aspect of a city in Grand Theft Auto, like a stadium—at least for now. For example, let’s say you wanted your game to be set in a spaceship with the interior design of a Buddhist temple. Roblox introduced an AI chat translator last month to ease communications across language barriers, and usage of Roblox’s proprietary TextChatService in creators’ experiences has more than doubled in the feature’s first 30 days. 19.7 billion messages have been auto-translated so far, or approximately one in three messages sent over the period. The company knows that it could be disrupted by the combination of AI and user-generated content, and so it’s attempting to move fast with its own AI innovations.

These advancements underscore Roblox’s ongoing investments in AI innovation. In addition to Avatar Auto Setup and Texture Generator, the company has recently launched Code Assist and automatic chat translations, further enhancing the platform’s capabilities and global reach. Data is crucial for training AI and machine learning systems, and synthetic data offers a solution to the challenges of compiling real-world data. Nathan Kundtz, founder and CEO of Rendered.ai, discusses how his company’s platform generates synthetic data to enhance AI models. There is another game, Roblox, which has been experimenting with AI-powered tools to improve productivity and output for some time now. But, as part of this year’s Roblox Developers Conference (RDC), they have announced something really cool.

Roblox Builds Open-Source 3D AI Model, Adds Tech for Faster Game Loading – PCMag

Roblox Builds Open-Source 3D AI Model, Adds Tech for Faster Game Loading.

Posted: Fri, 06 Sep 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The company did this thanks to gains from its platform technology and from the use of the analytics dashboard by creators to tune and improve performance. Roblox is also rolling out an integration with music distribution service DistroKid to offer eligible artists a straightforward and official way to upload and share their music on Roblox. This integration gives creators the ability to use the tens of thousands of songs provided by DistroKid to expand their experience alongside the opportunity for music discovery within the community. By the end of this year, Roblox will have a catalog of music on Roblox that spans genres, like electronic, pop, dance, rock, country, rap, and hip-hop. Over the past 12 months ended June 30, 2024, the company paid over $800 million to the creator community. The company said players engaged for 17.4 billion hours in Q2 2024, up 24% year-over-year.

It would allow Decart and Etched to make a better version of their current demo, allowing the game to run longer, with fewer hallucinations, and at higher resolution. They say the new chip would also make it possible for more players to use the model at once. Roblox began with building a transformer-based large language model (LLM), which trained on publicly available and internal data. It placed the LLM within a Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture, an environment that ran multiple translation apps, with each one an expert in one language. This allowed Roblox to save on resources without needing to build a separate LLM for each language. Sturman said considering the scale of their project, his team believed it was easier to build their own model than modify an off-the-shelf LLM.

“All of that is coming down the pipe, and it comes from having a better architecture and better hardware to power it. So that’s what we’re really trying to get people to realize with the proof of concept here,” says Wachen. They relied on Nvidia cards for their current demo, but in the future, they plan to use Sohu, a new card that Etched has in development, which the firm claims will improve performance by a factor of 10. This gain would significantly cut down on the cost and energy needed to produce real-time interactive video.

Roblox Teases an Open-Source AI 3D World Creator – It’s FOSS News

Roblox Teases an Open-Source AI 3D World Creator.

Posted: Tue, 10 Sep 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Here, generative AI can really help with the most time-consuming parts of creation and can lift the floor on quality for everyone. It takes away some of the burden on developers to continually spend their time and effort learning new platforms, coding languages, tools, and using those to micromanage their ideas. “We’ve been building generative AI into Roblox for years with tools like Assistant, Texture Generator, and Avatar Auto Setup.

Users will also be able to modify scenes or expand their scope—say, to change a daytime scene to night or switch the desert for a forest. We’ve mentioned that we’re building our own model internally and running our own inference on voice, safety, internally on search—we’re live—and we have a lot of 3D generative coming as we move to creation everywhere and our avatar project. There are many, many, many areas that we’re already live on the platform with ML and AI stacks and more to come.

Notably, Roblox plans to open-source its 3D foundation model, allowing developers and even competitors to use and modify it. Choosing an open source approach could also allow the company to utilize knowledge from AI developers if they contribute to the project and improve it over time. According to Singh, lack of 3D training data can create glitches in the results, like a dog with too many legs.

The early results are promising – he says creators using Roblox’s AI Assistant have increased their output by 31%. We spoke to Corazza not long ago about what he calls “4D generative AI,” and he goes into greater detail here. Other tools include the platform’s real-time translation AI, which now processes 20 billion messages. Getting it into as many hands as possible also opens creative possibilities for developers who are not as skilled at creating Roblox environments. “There are a lot of developers that are working alone, and for them, this is going to be a game changer, because now they don’t have to try to find someone else to work with,” says Holmström. Baszucki said the company is approaching five billion monthly interaction hours on the platform.

If successful, Roblox AI tools would allow regular creators, with little to no coding experience, to generate spontaneous lifelike gaming experiences right inside Roblox. However, nowadays the crunch is less likely to be glamorized than to be seen as a form of exploitation that risks causing mental illness and burnout. Roblox has revealed two new AI-powered tools at GDC, designed to streamline content creation in the 3D space. These tools, the Avatar Auto Setup and Texture Generator, reduce the time commitment to setting up avatar and texturing steps “by hours or even days”. “In the future, we envision every part of a user experience on Roblox to be fully translated into their native language, including offering AI-powered voice translation.” Stefano Corazza is the head of Roblox Studio/GenAI at Roblox, having previously served as vice president at Adobe, where he led augmented reality initiatives.

As Roblox’s share of the global gaming market grows, Baszucki said so does the virtual economy that has powered the creation of nearly 18,000 full-time job equivalents in the U.S. over the past seven years (based on direct and indirect jobs created). That number is very significant, considering that there were 10,500 layoffs in games in 2023 and 12,000 so far this year. Amir Satvat, who aggregates job data, estimated that a college grad trying to find a job in games had a 1% chance of finding work in the first year after graduation. On search and discovery, Roblox is working on how new people find new content off platform. To support this, the company is announcing a Creator Affiliate Program that rewards developers for new users that they bring to Roblox. You use this version of this 3D modelling tool, this programming language with that library, and so on.

For starters, it’s adding “Party,” which is a new way for a group of friends to move around Roblox together as a group in a private chat. Users in a Party can chat with each other even if they’re playing different games, and if they all want to play the same game, they can send invites to each other. Our custom multilingual large language model supports live chat translation in 16 languages, meaning. For example, a user who only speaks Korean can seamlessly chat with one who only speaks English. Our focus is on building tools that eliminate mundane tasks, like replicating the same edit on thousands of objects, so that creators can focus on what they love doing – building worlds. We’ve been working to provide our creator community with a new set of cutting-edge generative AI tools for high-quality 3D generation, and we imagine a powerful future where it is possible to generate any 3D object or scene you can imagine.