Games have talked about "enemy AI" for 25+ years. Hell, Halo 1 was considered revolutionary for its advanced enemy AI. Was that a hype word? Was that an incorrect misnomer?
Different fields use the same term to mean unrelated things. "AI" in gaming just means "non-player-controlled entity behavior" and has meant that all the way back to the first chess computer games (when they did think what they were doing was "AI").
"Theory" in law, versus in science is another example.
Scripted enemies are "non-player-controlled entity behavior", yet they are not AI. For NPC behaviours to be considered game AI, there needs to be some calculation depending on the current state of the game and objectives of the character. What makes a game behaviour "AI" is its feedback with the player actions and/or events evolving in the game.
Super Mario mushrooms and turtles are not AI controlled; Pac-Man ghosts are. (Possibly the earliest and simplest form of game AI, but quite effective for its purpose).
> Scripted enemies are "non-player-controlled entity behavior", yet they are not AI.
I've worked on and seen games and game engines where scripted NPC behavior was lumped under the "AI" umbrella and implemented by the same people and systems that support the non-scripted behavior.
Architecturally, it doesn't make that much sense to separate out scripted behavior from non-scripted, because non-scripted behavior has most of the same needs to playing animations, triggering, audio, interact with physics, etc.
Scripted behavior is just an "AI" that happens to not read any inputs before deciding its outputs.
The AI was pre-trained before the game shipped. Kinda like how you can have a conversation with ChatGPT and it will eventually forget what you've "taught" it
Which leads us to the question; in the biological world, are actions stemming from instinct, but that looks intelligent to the observer, also intelligence?
No. In games AI is a jargon term for the behavior of an NPC. It has a long history in this use. When people talk about a game’s AI it is often clear what is being discussed regardless of the specific technology used. It is therefore useful for communicating an idea and that’s usually all that really matters.
