Streamlabs, the Logitech-owned streaming software for live streamers is implementing generative AI-driven recommendations and conversation, ranging from troubleshooting to giving insight on why your chat has suddenly gone quiet.
Announced in a press release, the "intelligent streaming assistant" is made up of three central functions. The first is as a '3D Sidekick'. This AI functions as another host, which can answer questions you have in regards to the content you are reacting to, it can research topics for you, and it can even be used for "stimulating conversation when the stream is quiet by commenting on in-game events and chat activity".
You can also customise the personality of the 3D Sidekick to fit the tone of your stream and give you something to go back and forth with. We haven't yet seen this in action but it's hard to imagine this won't feel a little stilted in practice. This is made in tandem with "industry leaders like Nvidia and Inworld". Nvidia itself just announced a whole host of AI implementations in video games like a PUBG teammate who can respond to requests.
Nvidia's ACE AI suite is powering the sidekick, including "audio-to-face animations" as well as the contextual clue to attempt to understand what is on screen. Inworld then works on the cognitive engine, dealing with inputs and turning those inputs into understandable commands.
If the 3D Sidekick doesn't interest you, another function of this implementation allows the AI to function as a Producer behind the scenes, changing scenes dynamically to account for what's happening on screen.
A lot of live streamers will have jokes, gags, and references made as filters and scenes during their stream and this producer can activate them while you chat to your audience. As well as this, it can dynamically produce video and audio cues to add to your stream.
Finally, the AI can function as a 'technical assistant', troubleshooting problems you have with Streamlabs, from setting the app up to creating scenes. This is intended to make streaming for the first time more intuitive. The assistant can monitor streams for technical problems.
Though the first implementation of AI strikes me as a bit gimmicky long term, the latter two could help streamline the streaming process, especially for those who don't have the resources to hire a full team. We haven't seen this in action yet so we'll have to wait for its implementation "within the first half of 2025" to see it for ourselves.
