Bandai Namco has created a recipe for disaster. Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization is its next anime-inspired game heading to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita worldwide, and with it comes a bit of a social experiment. The game is going to have a NPC called Premiere in it. People who are interested in the game can give her access to their Twitter feeds , allowing her to learn from their tweets to form her personality. Her personal Twitter feed and in-game avatar will then use what she’s learned to determine how she’ll interact with people.
See where the problem lies? Bandai Namco will have Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization’ s Premiere relying on people’s keywords. If she sees stuff comes up often, she’ll add those words to her vocabulary and use them in conversations. Microsoft tried a similar experiment with a Twitter chat bot named Tay. People interacted with the AI, and she learned to be a hateful troll from those talks. It all happened within 24 hours and led to Microsoft shutting her down. The experiment crashed and burned.
But, in a way, Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization’ s Premiere turning into a troll would be rather fitting. The game is set in a MMO. They’re known for having all sorts of players, some of them rather aggressive and unpleasant. If people turn Premiere into someone like that, maybe it won’t be the worst? Especially if we’re able to completely avoid interacting with her in the game?