Every time my kids get stuck playing a game, they run around the house screaming for me to help them. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I do. Cooking dinner, taking out the trash, going to the bathroom, no place is safe. I patiently try to explain to them that in my time, there was no adult to help me beat Snake Man. Mega-Man 3 or find Excalibur in Final Fantasy IV. I just had to bang my head against the wall until I figured it out or give up until I got older.
They never find this paternal wisdom satisfactory, so I find them Zonai devices in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Realm or disable damage in the Minecraft settings menu like a personal accessibility assistant. Will they do the same for their children? They may not have to. The new AI “ghosts” might be able to do everything in the game for them. The games can, on command, play themselves. Perfect for grinding cryptocurrency in Roblox mines while the oceans rise. RIP my future grandchildren.
A Sony patent for these AI ghosts is circulating online today. As reported by VGCSeptember 2024 registration documents that were made public earlier this week reveal technology that would allow people to get AI to help them beat games. These AI “ghost players” would be trained on existing gameplay sequences and demonstrate the solution to an obstacle (“Guide Mode”) or overcome it entirely (“Complete Mode”).
The patent doesn’t make it clear whether Sony actually plans to move forward with this new AI-assisted tool now or in the future. People have makes jokes online about how bad current AI is when it comes to mind-blowing gameplay, showing you something that seems pretty normal before switching to surreal nightmare fuel moments later. There are also concerns about how the AI ”assistant” would be trained, which apparently include images shared on social networks and YouTube.
the point of a film is not to have finished watching it. the goal of a song is not to finish listening to it. Players’ obsession with completion as the only motivator to play a game has directly led to the worst traits of the medium. The ‘ghost of AI gaming’ is a reflection of the lack of willingness to engage
— funbil (@funbil.bsky.social) 2026-01-06T14:58:57.706Z
Video game companies have long tried to help players overcome difficulties they designed into their games. In the past, there were helplines and strategy manuals. More recently, companies have attempted to integrate guides directly into games. PlayStation 5 game help shows you videos showing how other players completed a particular section of a game. It’s an interesting idea whose implementation is complicated and incomplete. Microsoft is trying to go further and integrate his AI Copilot in games to offer overlay chatbot assistance like a new version of Clippy.
Tools like this could be a boon to helping more people enjoy games or at least get “unstuck” before bouncing back in a fit of boredom or frustration. But there is also a Black mirror version where all the friction of playing a game is transferred entirely to the AI agents. How many games would be improved by adding a skip button that lets you fast forward your progress by 20 seconds or 20 minutes? How many games would you stop playing altogether if you could relieve yourself of the chore entirely?
AI ghosts grinding AI-optimized battle passes Gamers love to optimize their strategies and gain the upper hand in the games they play. Sometimes that means doing a lot of work to work as efficiently as possible or creating the most broken build. Other times, it means wrapping a rubber band around an analog stick and falling asleep while the game does all the work for you. What would it be like to play Diablo 4 if the builds you had to search for online were automatically recommended in the skill tree menu?
What would be the point if, at any time, you could put down the mouse and keyboard and let an AI agent, trained on YouTube or even your own gaming history, take the wheel and work until all that hyper-rare loot finally drops? Not everyone would accept. Maybe some would. We already know what choice would Elon Musk make?.
Experience-based games would probably be safe. The ones where you’re there for the player choice or the story, although even fans of things like Shipping might be tempted to have someone else handle all the less engaging mini-games. Multiplayer games have faced an ongoing arms race with cheaters for years. Who wouldn’t be tempted to take credit for a Battle Royale duo victory won by their AI counterpart? None of this is in Sony’s patent for AI assistance, but it’s all in the same Pandora’s box.
In fact, some of the most popular games of recent years play with automating the player’s role to some extent until it is no longer relevant to the outcome. This is what made people obsessed with Vampire Survivors. This is what helped X Pit Ball selling over a million copies. This is what did Megabonk so popular that it ended up being nominated for a Game Awards award from which the developer had to recuse itself. Some games invite us to accept the instant drudgery of simulated work. Others lure us with the siren song that invites us to participate in a high-score chase where the big reward sees our own participation gradually diminished.
In 20 years, even this concept might seem as foreign to my grandchildren as calling something a “button press.” By then, computers will undoubtedly be able to read input directly into their minds. What the AI chooses to do with it, well, is anyone’s guess.