PUBG’s new AI teammates are both fascinating and depressing

NVidia and the team behind PUBG have launched an experiment called ‘PUBG Ally’, where you can enter a duos battle royale match teamed up with an AI squadmate instead of a human. It might sound like the plot of a dystopian horror but the scariest thing is that it very nearly works.

My first reaction to the unveiling of Ally was understandably mixed. On one hand, AI is obviously bad and is destroying creativity and artistry across the internet. Replacing human players with AI ‘squadmates’ feels like embracing the ‘Dead Internet Theory’ with open arms and welcoming our new robot overlords. On the other hand, the entire model runs on your GPU so at least it’s not using some unfathomable amount of clean water; and instead of stealing other people’s content to train it, they rented internet cafés, hired over a thousand PUBG players and got them to play 40,000 matches.

PUBG Ally is an attempt to solve a real problem that’s faced gamers over the last few decades: Online multiplayer games are more fun to play in teams, but a lot of people on the internet are not fun to play with. Of course there are Discord servers, subreddits and all sorts of other communities where like-minded gamers can meet new people and squad up... but it’s still not easy to find a good squad. 

It’s hard to find other people who are free when you are, at a similar skill level, who also happen to gel with your personality. That’s before we even worry about the toxic players, the bigots, and the trolls.  

As I get older (I’m 40 which feels ancient by online gamer standards), I increasingly want to play with like-minded people my age, but when I’m gaming at 9am on a weekday morning it’s quite hard to find other grown adults with a modicum of decency who are up for a spot of DMZ. It’s also socially exhausting to play with strangers, keep the communication going and compete in a game, then do it all again with a new group when somebody drops out. 

This is all to say, I get it. I understand the appeal of an AI teammate who will play a team game whenever you want with absolutely no pressure to be entertaining or talkative. Ella, the name of the PUBG Ally AI, will never care if you’re a little bit quiet and withdrawn today. They won’t ever have a bad quality mic, blast you for a bad play, or bail on you in the middle of a gaming session. The fantasy of the PUBG Ally is having an incredibly reliable teammate who is completely acceptable in every way.

Sadly, the Ally is also as dumb as a bag of rocks.