AI Friends in Minecraft: What’s the Point?
Recently, I saw an article by Dexerto regarding an official resource pack sponsored by Minecraft; a usually paid addition that adds more content.
This new pack labeled itself as an “AI player” pack. When I, and many others initially saw this, it was assumed Mojang and Microsoft were about to go full in on AI and sellout a game I personally cherished growing up; especially for the game’s focus on creativity and individuality.
The creators of the mod, Gamemode One, insisted that it was not “real” AI, rather that it was all human made, and that it was mostly meant when you can’t connect to the Wi-Fi and want to play with friends.
Even though it’s not full-on generative AI, I think this is fundamentally bad for the Minecraft community. For one, you need to pay five whole dollars for it, which is frankly ridiculous; why would you pay for a fake friend whom you can’t share a human connection with? That’s the whole point of playing with friends!
You talk about the game for maybe ten minutes and then talk about literally anything else. Adding such interactive NPCs to a game based on playing with friends strips the human connection between people and is no better than just having full AI in the game. Personally, I don’t see a point in adding generative AI to everything, especially when it takes away the human connections that make gaming fun.
Reed, I loved your article! I find it so sad that AI friends are being peddled to kids online. Very sad. Thank you for bringing awareness to this as I had no clue about it beforehand.