During the Google I/O conference earlier this year the company wowed the audience with a demonstration of its natural language processing technology in conjunction with AI, allowing a users phone to talk and make reservations or change an appointment. Today, Los Angeles-based Artie, a company specialising in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) has partially come out of stealth to showcase Artie’s Adventure, an experience using AI-powered characters for Google Daydream.
An experimental VR experience directed by Armando Kirwin and TJ Fuller, Artie’s Adventure revolves around Santa Monica surf pup Artie, who needs your help to get back to the beach. Designed as an interactive adventure driven by AI characters whilst using voice control to talk to Artie and other new friends, you need to assist the pup on its journey across a hyper-stylized Los Angeles.
The AI technology was developed by Artie and is built on top of Unity and Google Cloud, making heavy use of Google’s natural language processing capabilities.
Little has been revealed regarding the gameplay other than the voice interaction, which will allow you to ask Artie to do tricks, grab bit to eat and generally converse with the characters around you. This hasn’t been shown in great depth, but it’s more than likely – because of the tech used – that you’ll be able to have reasonable conversations.
Artie’s Adventure will be exclusive to Google Daydream and the Lenovo Mirage Solo, making extensive use of the 6DOF capabilities offered by Google’s WorldSense technology.
While Artie might be revealing its first project today the company is still staying in stealth for a little while longer, with plans for an official announcement regarding co-founders, investment, teams and so on taking place later this month.
The title will be released in stages with Chapter 1 arriving today, with Chapter 2 to follow in two weeks and Chapter 3 to follow two weeks after that. Artie’s Adventure can be downloaded from the Google Play store. As further updates are released regarding the experience, VRFocus will keep you updated.