San Francisco - Jan 8, 2025, 9am PST
Studio Atelico, a new gaming startup founded by veterans of Uber, Meta and Creative Assembly, today announced a new AI Engine to allow game developers to deliver game experiences powered by GenAI that run on-device without requiring prohibitively expensive cloud solutions. The Atelico AI Engine significantly reduces costs for developers while also providing full control and flexibility thanks to its modular design.
Piero Molino, CEO, Studio Atelico said:
“The revolution is upon us. GenAI is enabling new interactive experiences that have never been possible before. However, the current, large-model approach that Cloud AI providers are taking is fundamentally flawed for video games. Game developers currently implementing GenAI in their games are struggling due to the high costs and the lack of fine-grained control needed in video game development.
“We've built something different - an AI Engine for video games that solves these problems by running on the player’s device and giving the developer a modular toolset to integrate in Unreal, Unity and Godot. Our Atelico AI Engine finally makes GenAI possible for every game developer.”
JP Chen, Co-Founder, Studio Atelico continued:
“Usually, AI models that run on-device alone do not match the performance of large cloud models. This can result in a worse experience for players. Leveraging the deep experience our team has in training AI models, we developed a first generation of small models that are specifically tuned for video games, effectively bridging the gap with larger models on gaming specific tasks. High quality models running on-device enable a reduction of costs by five orders of magnitude compared to Cloud or SaaS-based solutions. Our models are also optimized to ensure device resources aren’t heavily impacted.”
The Atelico AI Engine is easy to embed in game engines and provides full control and flexibility due to its modular design. It’s a tool for harnessing AI to craft expansive worlds that respond to players in ways never thought possible. Developers can design with complete creative control, bringing players into experiences that are unique, where every choice feels real, every character feels alive and the game world is truly reactive.
To showcase the Atelico AI Engine, the team built a tech demo inspired by the Stanford paper “Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior”. Unlike the original, which ran in discrete turns rather than in real time and cost $500 per game day using OpenAI, the Atelico demo, called the Generative Agents Realtime Playground (GARP), runs locally in real time on a Nvidia RTX 3090 without incurring any costs. It features a simulated village with over 20 characters living in it.
Paul Szerlip, CTO and Co-Founder, Studio Atelico explains:
“In GARP, villagers are autonomous agents that plan their day, make decisions, take actions to complete objectives, form memories, engage in conversation and coordinate with each other to complete tasks. All behavior is based on each character’s background, personality and the memories of their experiences. Characters reflect on their experiences and learn, so every day is different.”
“These mechanics lead to emergent behavior: just adding to a character’s memory that today is their birthday results in them spreading the news and the entire village organizing and attending a birthday party. This emergent behavior is truly remarkable, enabling it with traditional AI techniques would require a lot more than one line of text.”
Watch the GARP Tech Demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krOP_bIW74g
Ennio De Nucci, Co-Founder and Design Director, Studio Atelico explained:
“Our goal is to abstract the technical complexity of GenAI to empower game developers. The Atelico AI Engine today can already enrich simulation games similar to The Sims or Stardew Valley, but it's not limited to this genre. Its modular design makes it possible for game developers to use it for different genres of games that may not require agentic behavior: think of an engaging diplomacy system in a strategy game where the player needs to negotiate with other factions, or a narrator voice that reacts dynamically to the actions of the player, like the bard Jaskier/Dandelion commenting dynamically on Geralt's deeds in The Witcher.”
“Atelico AI Engine is the perfect tool for developers to invent entirely new game genres. We foresee a Cambrian explosion of creativity, where our AI tools empower designers to build more immersive experiences and truly widen the horizon of what’s possible. The only limitation is the developer's imagination!”
Developers who wish to talk to the team or demo the Atelico AI Engine should email hello@atelico.studio or visit https://atelico.studio. This press release features abridged quotes from Studio Atelico’s original blog post, to read the full blog post click here https://atelico.studio/blog/cloud-ai-for-video-games-is-dead-on-arrival.
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About Studio Atelico
Studio Atelico is a new gaming startup founded by veterans of Uber, Meta and Creative Assembly. The company is working on a new AI Engine which will allow games developers to deliver game experiences powered by Generative AI (GenAI) that run on-device without requiring prohibitively expensive cloud solutions. The Atelico AI Engine significantly reduces costs for developers while also providing full control and flexibility thanks to its modular design. Watch the GARP tech demo here or visit http://atelico.studio.
PR Contacts:
Eva Field / Helen Jones