Great minds think alike, as do the biggest gaming brands around. After it came to light earlier this year that Sony had applied for a patent for AI-generated “ghost” players to help out actual players, a patent application for something eerily similar from Xbox maker Microsoft has recently been published.
As spotted by Tech4Gamers and Eurogamer, Microsoft applied for this patent back in 2024. Titled “State management for video game help sessions,” the patent concerns aiding players who get stuck in games. From the patent’s abstract, it would allow for “inputs received from a client device of a video game helper” to help you during a “help session.” A friend of yours, for example, could remotely play your game for you to help you get through tough platforming sessions or boss battles. You’d then be allowed to accept the help sessions and “proceed with video game play from that state” or reject the help, reverting your game back to where it was before a helper took over. Basically, it would give you the option to see a solution and choose to accept it or attempt to enact it yourself.
The “video game helper” doesn’t need to be a friend or even a fellow human at all. A “generative model,” which the patent application defines as “a machine learning model employed to generate new content,” could be used to help you advance in a game. One type of AI helper would be “a multi-modal generative model [that] may be capable of using various combinations of text, images, video, audio, application states, code, or other modalities” to generate inputs and outputs in your game.
(If you find yourself needing assistance while playing new games, like Resident Evil Requiem or Marathon, Polygon has a robust guides section. Check ’em out!)
Microsoft applied for this patent because it deems players going to forums for help or watching YouTube walkthroughs as “rather rudimentary” ways to overcome difficult parts of games, and because it doesn’t want you turning away from your game when you need to seek help. The potential patent doesn’t sound too dissimilar to Microsoft’s Copilot for Gaming program, the “AI-driven sidekick” that can help you in games, according to Jeff Rubenstein, director of Xbox editorial.
Generative AI doesn’t seem to be going anywhere — especially if genAI podcasts start showing up on your consoles. For what it’s worth, new Microsoft Gaming CEO (and former Microsoft CoreAI president) Asha Sharma has pledged to “not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop.”
She asserts that video games “are and always will be art, crafted by humans.” Video game helpers, on the other hand…
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