Source: NVIDIA

At the game developer conference UNREAL FEST, NVIDIA announced the integration of 'PUBG L-AI' (hereinafter 'L-AI') into the new 'L-AI Duo' mode for 'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' (hereinafter 'PUBG'). Alongside this, the company unveiled the new 'NVIDIA ACE Game Agent SDK' and 'Unreal Engine 5' plugins.

The 'L-AI Duo' mode in 'PUBG' will be available as a beta service on Steam through the 30th (local time). In this mode, players can team up with 'L-AI,' an AI teammate that adaptively perceives battlefield conditions. 'L-AI' plays a role in adjusting its playstyle in real-time based on user instructions and the battlefield environment.

'L-AI' autonomously makes decisions for tasks such as looting, engaging in combat, and route navigation, eliminating the need for cumbersome manual prompts. It handles both voice and text input, ranging from casual conversation to detailed tactical commands. Notably, it accurately understands game-specific terminology, user slang, key map locations, and equipment attributes, allowing it to cooperate organically with the player to help secure victory.

Developed through an AI R&D collaboration between KRAFTON and NVIDIA, 'L-AI' is a next-generation AI character designed to significantly enhance game immersion.

NVIDIA RTX technology is built into 'Unreal Engine 5' based on the 'NVIDIA Unreal Engine RTX Branch' and 'DLSS Unreal Engine' plugins. Developers can use these to directly control high-resolution rendering, frame generation, and ray-tracing-based lighting effects within the engine.

At the event, NVIDIA officially introduced the new 'NVIDIA ACE Game Agent SDK' and the 'NVIDIA ACE' plugin suite for 'Unreal Engine.' Detailed specifications are available on the official NVIDIA blog.

The 'NVIDIA ACE Game Agent SDK' is a lightweight, C/C++-based open-source framework designed for native integration. It offers flexible customization, is optimized for small models, and supports NVIDIA RTX hardware acceleration. Developers can control the SDK using three core APIs: Agent, Chat, and RAG. This allows NPCs to judge in-game situations and move in response to real-time user input. This technology has already been validated in actual titles, such as the AI advisor feature in 'Total War: Pharaoh.'

The new 'NVIDIA ACE' plugin suite is distributed to 'Unreal Engine 5' developers and technical artists. With these plugins, creators can easily implement real-time dialogue recording, dynamic conversations, interactive voice control, and context-aware response systems into in-game logic. Unlike cloud-based solutions, which often suffer from high latency and unpredictable costs, these plugins ensure a local environment optimized for RTX hardware. The local runtime AI models support both Blueprints and C++ environments and are built on three key pillars.

First, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). It includes the ready-to-use English model 'nemo-conformer-ctc-120m,' along with downloads for seven additional language models, sample levels, and Blueprint examples for rapid development.

Second, Small Language Model (SLM) capabilities. It supports the local .gguf format, enabling low-latency text generation and function calling. Specialized for fast character dialogue and computation, it comes with the 'Qwen 3.5 4B' model built-in.

Third, Text-to-Speech (TTS). It includes the high-quality 'Chatterbox Turbo 350M' TTS model, example voices, sample levels, and dedicated content for character performance.

The 'NVIDIA ACE Unreal Engine 5' plugins can be downloaded via the official download page.