Ubisoft Launches Teammates, a GenAI NPC Prototype

French publisher Ubisoft has announced its new project ‘Teammates,’ a research prototype that uses generative AI to create NPC companions that respond to real-time voice commands. The company presented the project during a closed-door briefing at its Paris studio, and said the experiment shows how its teams intend to advance what it calls 'generative play.'

The prototype builds on Ubisoft’s March 2024 Neo NPCs, which showed conversational and reasoning abilities, but operated in static environments. Teammates moves that work into a playable first-person shooter and enables companions to interpret tone, intent, and environmental cues in real time.

Ubisoft stated that the project was developed by a team of 80 people, using Google Gemini and internal middleware. The system operates on the Snowdrop engine, which also powers several of the company’s major titles. Ubisoft described the initiative as an effort to move beyond the “GenAI” label by focusing on features that affect gameplay and player control.

Ubisoft Expands Neo NPCs Research With Real-Time Voice Interaction

A companion named Jaspar is central to the prototype; according to Ubisoft, Jaspar can brief players on objectives, highlight threats, provide lore explanations, and adjust HUD or menu settings. Ubisoft said these capabilities show early potential for accessibility features and personalized play. Two additional companions, ‘Pablo’ and ‘Sophia,’ support combat and puzzle solving, and can react to natural phrasing such as “stand on the plate on the left.”

The system combines behavior trees with an LLM reasoning layer that selects actions based on gameplay context. Ubisoft’s director of generative AI gameplay, Xavier Manzanares, stated the goal is to test how voice interaction changes the way players feel in control. He added that the team would discard any feature that functions better through a conventional controller.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot recently told investors that the company is applying generative AI to “high-value use cases that bring tangible benefits.” He compared its potential influence to the industry’s shift to 3D and said teams across Ubisoft’s studios are exploring AI applications in art, programming, and gameplay.

Teammates is now Ubisoft’s most advanced generative AI experiment. If adopted in future projects, it could shape companion design, onboarding, and accessibility, pointing to more voice-driven interaction ahead. The effort comes as the gaming-AI market heads toward more than $7B in 2025, positioning Ubisoft within a fast-expanding competitive space.