As Microsoft’s $68.7bn Activision buyout awaits approval, games giant files patent for AI music tech
Back again in January, Microsoft issued jaw-dropping news that it was buying Activision Blizzard in an all-cash transaction valued at $68.7 billion.
Activision – one particular of world’s most prominent interactive entertainment builders, publishers and distributors – is powering hit gaming franchises like Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Connect with of Responsibility and Candy Crush.
As noted by Microsoft in January, the offer for Activision, which employs almost 10,000 personnel globally, would see Microsoft launched into the placement of the world’s 3rd-greatest gaming business by earnings, guiding Tencent and Sony.
The buyout has attracted world wide scrutiny however, from regulators in the US, as nicely as the British isles, and the European Union.
In the meantime, as Microsoft and Activision await news of the online games giant’s destiny from these opposition watchdogs, the company appears to have been operating on technological innovation that could have vast-reaching implications for sure sectors of the music business enterprise.
As noted by Movie Game titles Chronicle, Activision has been experimenting with tech that results in AI-generated personalized new music for gamers in just a video clip recreation.
That is according to a US patent filed by Activision Publishing in March for an invention titled, “Systems and Approaches for Dynamically Building and Modulating Audio Based on Gaming Activities, Participant Profiles and/or Player Reactions”.
Activision points out in its filing that “Multiplayer online gaming has viewed explosive proliferation throughout the world with obtain to a broad selection of age groups” and “while quite a few attributes of movie video games have come to be highly customizable, musical factors have a tendency to be standardized throughout all players”.
For that reason, argues Activision, “there is [a] need to have for systems and procedures that produce and modulate audio unique to unique players”.
“By leveraging synthetic intelligence (AI), an infinite mixture of new music and audio can be quickly produced to stay clear of acquiring to manually generate audio/audio which then requires to be tagged for enjoy dependent on distinct situational queues.”
Activision patent filing
The filing explains that, “By automating the procedure of what kind of songs is being performed and to what depth dependent on the condition, participant working experience, etc., tunes and audio can create additional immersive and pleasurable gameplay experiences”.
It provides: “By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), an infinite mix of music and audio can be routinely generated to avoid obtaining to manually produce new music/audio which then needs to be tagged for engage in based mostly on unique situational queues.”
In other words, brand-new audio, produced by AI, reducing out the need for pre-recorded compositions and appears developed specially for a game, or audio composed by proven songwriters and recorded by artists, and then synced for use inside of a video game.
Just one issue this filing will toss up is, what will the use of such AI tunes tech for soundtracking video games suggest for the long term connection concerning the $180 billion online video games small business, composers, publishers, soundtrack providers, and the broader sync sector?
Activision’s submitting clarifies that its personalized tunes could be specifically tailored based on a quantity of variables.
Some of people things consist of “a amount of the player’s ability and/or expertise, and primarily based on 1 or more of gaming event(s) that a player encounters”, as very well as “the player’s response(s), the player’s reaction(s), the player’s enter(s) and/or the player’s motion(s) all through the gaming events”.
“By automating the course of action of what form of music is being played and how the audio is modulated, the video activity may well turn out to be far more immersive, develop into more pleasing and offer gamers with a wide range of customizable characteristics in get to enhance the overall user expertise.”
Activision patent filing
The filing proceeds: “There is also a need to have for systems and solutions that correlate produced and modulated new music to the player’s achievement or failure through gameplay and that use the correlation to enhance the player’s general performance in long term gameplay.
“By automating the process of what variety of tunes is being performed and how the new music is modulated, the online video game may possibly turn into extra immersive, develop into extra enjoyable and present gamers with a huge assortment of customizable capabilities in purchase to greatly enhance the all round user experience.”
MBW has lengthy coated the increase of AI-generated new music and the implications it may have on the tunes organization.
A person of the most modern significant-profile stories came from South Korea, where by HYBE, the corporation guiding K-pop stars BTS, acquired AI voice startup Supertone for above $32 million.
Founded in 2020, Supertone promises to be in a position to produce “a hyper-realistic and expressive voice that [is not] distinguishable from serious humans”.
The corporation made use of this tech to “resurrect” the voice of South Korean folk celebrity Kim Kwang-seok, with the subsequent AI-generated voice debuted on Korean television clearly show Competitors of the Century: AI vs Human.
HYBE CEO Jiwon Park told the company’s shareholders on Monday (October 17) that Supertone’s tech will “serve as a crucial piece of the technological know-how sphere we aim to create” as the firm diversifies its organization for when its flagship act BTS get a break to do compulorsy armed forces company.
Jiwon Park included that “HYBE strategies to unveil new content and providers to our lovers by combining our articles-development abilities with Supertone’s AI-dependent talking and singing vocal synthesis engineering.”
In other places in the movie game titles business, previous 12 months, a organization referred to as Reactional Music unveiled its have patented engineering that lets authentic-time personalization of soundtracks and tunes in the course of gameplay, and claimed to want to wholly “re-produce [the] regulations for songs and video games”.
Reactional Audio, whose President David Knox invested 26 decades in senior world administration positions at EA, states that it allows any commercial or creation audio to turn into interactive around the gamer within just a activity.
Reactional Songs was formerly a subsidiary of Sweden-centered songs-tech company Gestrument, but the two firms recently merged into a solitary enterprise beneath the title Reactional Tunes Group AB.
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