For some time now, we have been questioning how artificial intelligence will shape our lives, and there are still unknowns related to this new form of technology. However, there is one area where artificial intelligence has already entered and is quite visible. It is online gaming.
Large games such as World of Warcraft have been occupied by bots for some time now. Although many of them use simple point-and-click interfaces and reward players for completing repetitive tasks, some can easily use automated scripts to harvest in-game rewards at inhuman speeds, which can then be sold for real money on secondary markets.
However, their inability to maintain conversations with players has made them easier to spot, but the new ChatGPT add-on that appeared on the market in March has enabled bots to mimic human players more realistically, leaving real human players unable to report bad actors and developers trying to find a solution.
The technology powered by artificial intelligence not only threatens to transform these decades-old games but also offers a glimpse into a strange new reality where it is practically impossible to distinguish humans from robots.
No game today is as burdened by bots as ‘Old School RuneScape’. The relaunch of the adventure game by British Jagex, where players inhabit the fantasy world of Gielinor, kill monsters, build homes, and complete quests, boasts nearly two million active players and is classified as one of the busiest ‘massive multiplayer online’ games.
This game is extremely attractive to bots because it is quite simple, rewarding players with digital gold that is then easy to resell for real money. Although it is difficult to determine the exact number of ‘non-human’ accounts, it is estimated that about one-quarter of players are actually so-called ‘botters‘.
Botters, or those behind the bots, generally fall into two categories; players who use automated robot services to cheat the game and skip boring parts of the game, and players who run organized ‘bot farms’, or large groups of bots for mass currency gathering in the game to sell on secondary markets. Interestingly, according to Business Insider, players on the so-called ‘black market for games’ can earn even six-figure sums.
Such ‘players’ pose headaches for all developers who are introducing increasingly sophisticated mechanisms for identifying and banning bots, and the most reliable tool for detecting bots so far has been the community itself, as players can report accounts they believe to be fake. However, the integration of ChatGPT changes the ‘rules of the game’.
