Ubisoft Uses AI To Predict Programming Mistakes Before They Are Made

As further proof of how simultaneously amazing and frightening artificial intelligence can be, French video game publishing company Ubisoft is employing machine intelligence to head off potential bugs in its programming before they are even created. Now, as any fan of the company’s games can attest to, bugs and glitches are often an issue. With the help of the AI, this might no longer be the case in the future.

Called the Commit Assistant AI, the program was fed with codes that were made by developers before, which were riddled with mistakes in order to train it to spot future blunders. The company unveiled the revolutionary development during the Ubisoft Developer Conference that was held in Montreal, WIRED reports.

By catching programming mistakes before they are actually applied, it would save a lot of time and effort on the part of the developers, which would then make the process of creating video games much easier. As the head of the company’s Montreal R&D division, Yves Jacquier said during the event, they were able to develop the AI’s capabilities simply by comparing codes that they made before.

"It's all about comparing the lines of code we've created in the past, the bugs that were created in them, and the bugs that were corrected, and finding a way to make links [between them] to provide us with a super-AI for programmers," Jacquier said.

Of course, since this is new technology, the AI is still not capable enough to spot every single mistake in every line of code. Its success rate is only at about 60 percent right now, Futurism reports. However, in time, this is expected to change. What’s more, even that rate of success is enough to save developers a considerable amount of time.

Normally, testers have to find these mistakes to point out to programmers by putting the game through its paces. This is a long process that takes up too much of the company’s energy and resources, which could be better spent improving other aspects of the game.