Ugobe Talks Back, “It’s Real. We Promise”
After posting on the controversy surrounding the similarity between the two Pleo videos, I emailed Ugobe about the issue. Here’s what I said:
I’ve been covering the latest Pleo
news at PleoBot and I’ve been surprised to see the reaction to this video.I was wondering if I could get some official word from you in response to this?
And here’s what Ugobe says:
My name is Khristine and I work with UGOBE on the PR front. UGOBE forwarded me your e-mail regarding the recent YouTube videos questioning Pleo’s legitimacy. We were all surprised to see this post and the reaction to it as well. In response, and on behalf of UGOBE, I want to let you know that both of the videos in the YouTube post were made for DEMO 2006.
The DEMO Conference offers all presenters exactly six minutes to demonstrate their new products before a live audience. Real working Pleo units will evolve over time by autonomously interacting with the environment, using true AI. But, the prototype version in this demonstration video is not a full working model and was meant to just give people a taste – in condensed form – of Pleo’s range of behaviors and movements.
In the YouTube posting, the video on the right was taped at the conference. The one on the left is simply a backup of the first.
There you have it: 1) Not the final version of Pleo and 2) Two different videos for the same presentation. Seems to make sense to me. Props to Ugobe for taking care of this so quickly.
Still any naysayers?
August 15th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Good call.
I believe them, the pleo on the demo videos looks nothing like the one on the website, and I had the exact same thoughts going through my head (that this is like a ‘beta’ of the toy with a scripted action list showing what the toy is capable of).
Let’s hope they’re telling the truth, I’d love to get one of these if it’s true.
Jimzip
October 24th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
They’re not going to try to market something that doesn’t work. C’mon, I mean, really. Give them a little time.
November 27th, 2006 at 2:24 am
While it wasn’t really very honest of them to do it, this isn’t the first time somebody has done something like this and then come out with a great product.
Recall Valve’s early demonstrations of Half-Life 2. The demonstrations featured quite impressive examples of enemy AI responding to player action.
When a hacker broke into Valve’s computers and stole (and published publicly) the sourcecode to Half-Life 2, it was proven that all the behaviour in the demos were in fact scripted; the AI wasn’t responding to the player at all, it was the player (demonstrator) that was acting along, making sure that he was doing what the scripted sequences expected (just like the Pleo demos).
Of course, Valve did this because of time constraints, and the early development status of the product. They eventually finished Half-Life 2, and released it to critical success. The real-life in-game AI used a combination of scripted and reactionary AI that was quite impressive in practice, and everybody forgot about the earlier “faked” demonstrations.
The parallels between the two situations are striking. So while it was dishonest for Ugobe to fake the demo, that doesn’t mean that Ugobe won’t release a good product.
As a note, from what I remember of the Valve incident, the scripted nature of the events were most obvious in one particular part. When the player runs into a house, closes the door, and barricades it, the enemy bangs on the door, decides it can’t get in, and then breaks the window to get in. In the debunking, it was shown that even if you don’t even close the door, the AI still tried to bang on the non-existent door, and then breaks the window.