The Frontier of AI NPCs with Convai's CEO | Purnendu Mukherjee

Purnendu Mukherjee, CEO of Convai, shares insights into innovative approaches to developing human-like AI characters that can intelligently interact with users, perform actions, and engage in natural and responsive conversations.
This discussion sheds light on the future of interactive gaming, educational tools, and real-world applications of AI NPCs, from Mukherjee's personal journey, which sparked his deep interest in the mechanics of the human mind and AI, to the technical challenges and societal impacts of integrating AI within virtual spaces.
OUTLINE:
0:00 Introduction to Convai and AI NPCs
1:19 Purnendu's background and how he got into working on AI NPCs
04:22 - Current limitations of AI NPCs and what's needed to make them indistinguishable from humans
5:00 - Technical Challenges and Innovations
07:34 - Overcoming latency issues with AI NPCs
08:50 - Potential AI applications in gaming and why AI NPCs are attracting significant funding
15:17 - Differentiating factors and focus areas for Convai compared to competitors
19:19 - Steps for developers to integrate Convai's technology into a game
24:12 - Comparing effort and impact of using AI NPCs vs traditional dialogue trees and behavior trees
29:25 - Economics and business model of Convai - pricing for different types of games
34:31 - Bringing down costs for games with massive usage and appeal to global audiences
38:48 - Early traction and use cases Convai is seeing from customers today
43:18 - Potential for AI to enable new kinds of gaming experiences
47:55 - Feasibility of doing a fully AI-driven Dungeons & Dragons game with current technology
50:16 - Optionality if Convai solves AI NPCs for gaming to expand to other domains
53:14 - Purnendu's entrepreneurial learnings and the meaningful suffering of a startup journey
59:04 - Constructive criticism from GDC and Convai's commitment to enabling great art
59:55 - Conclusion
👇 EPISODE LINKS:
- Conv.ai: conv.ai/
- Purnendu Mukherjee: / purn3ndu
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[@afropovic]

"AI voice is not realistic"
GPT-4o enters the chat...

[@GameMakersDev]

ChatGPT-4o is really great!

[@dreamingacacia]

checked out Convai, won't use. I'd rather make traditional NPCs and maybe use free ChatGPT to help me make nice conversations with limited use.

[@GameMakersDev]

I think we will do a demo and let people see how it works end to end. Let’s see!

[@dreamingacacia]

@@GameMakersDev I don't like the real-time stuffs. It'd be better to have pre-gen and be done with it. Subscription service also isn't ideal for indies like me. Having an option to do 1 time deal without any dependencies would be much better.