Ubisoft is currently developing several AI applications, with some designed to improve its games, for example an AI that helps virtual agents avoid walking into each other, and at least one digital assistant for gamers, dubbed Sam. But as reported by Wired, the company has also developed another digital assistant focused on improving its developers" workflow, the Commit Assistant.
Announced at this year"s Ubisoft Developer Conference in Montreal, Commit Assistant was trained on Ubisoft"s vast library of code, which spans roughly ten years of developers" work. But most importantly, this library also contains code that was later changed due to bugs, which allows the AI to learn when code may malfunction if added to new projects. As stated by Yves Jacquier, head of La Forge, Ubisoft"s R&D division in Montreal:
It"s all about comparing the lines of code we"ve created in the past, the bugs that were created in them, and the bugs that were corrected, and finding a way to make links [between them] to provide us with a super-AI for programmers.
Ubisoft expects that Commit Assistant will help decrease the amount of work required during the debugging phase of game development, which accounts for up to 70 percent of the total cost. But for now, the company is still presenting the new tool to its developer teams in order to avoid building antipathy against it.
One of the possible reasons that could cause developers to dislike the new tool is that Commit Assistant also learns what may cause a bug and what could be the best approach to get rid of it, intruding directly into the developer"s work. But according to Jacquier, Ubisoft does not intend to impose the use of Commit Assistant to its employees - at least for now.
Source: Wired