The Sims-like inZOI lets you read the thoughts of its NVDIA ACE AI characters

Launching at the end of this week, the life simulation game inZOI has skyrocketed up the Steam wishlist charts - making the game's Early Access debut one of the most highly anticipated releases on the PC gaming platform. inZOI lets players control and simulate an entire community, where the characters - called Zois - will live out their lives.

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From robust character creation tools to customize housing, rooms, and even a city, inZOI is also shipping with powerful AI tools, including the ability to generate images and transform those images into in-game 3D objects. The game will also feature a "Smart Zoi" experimental setting, allowing players to turn Zois into NVIDIA ACE autonomous game characters.

As a life simulation where 'Zois' carry out their daily lives based on their own in-game experiences, switching them to generative AI characters sounds fascinating. You'll be able to read their inner thoughts as they go about their day while also customizing their personalities, life goals, and other settings to see how they interact with other Zois and the world.

It sounds like the generative AI version of The Sims, with the NVIDIA ACE Small Language Model (a .5B billion parameter Mistral NeMo Minitron) set to run locally on GeForce RTX hardware. NVIDIA's demonstration of inZOI's implementation of NVIDIA ACE autonomous game characters showcases some interesting behaviors, like characters buying food for the hungry or helping others find their destination.

Of course, as a live, unpredictable sandbox, it will be a lot more interesting to observe these generative AI characters going about their day and behaving in ways that aren't "AI is super friendly and nice."

inZOI launches into Early Access on March 28. As per the hardware requirements below, Smart Zoi can run on GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 4060 GPUs with 8GB of VRAM. However, the recommended GPU specs are the GeForce RTX 5070 and the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER - cards with 12GB of VRAM.

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"Smart Zoi is still an experimental feature with high system requirements," inZOI Studio writes. "As such, we recommend carefully checking your system specifications to ensure the best possible experience. We will continue to optimize and improve upon this feature to help more players experience its full potential."