Here's an inquiry for those more knowledgeable about IP law than myself: what's the state of the law regarding training an AI on copyrighted material besides code? I was debating this with someone in relation to the high definition texture packs for old games people have been making using models such as ESRGAN - do these infringe the copyright of the rights holders of the original assets? Or are they considered sufficiently transformative to be considered an original work?
As a child in the ancient days of the early 2000s, I would often setup botmatches consisting of 16 'players' in Quake 3 and spectate the resultant carnage. I wouldn't venture to say it was educational or intellectual in any sense, but it was still pretty fascinating - even as a ten year old - to observe what was essentially a bunch of fake people run around on my little P3. IIRC there were user made characters that had custom bot files with distinct 'personalities', so you could throw together different combinations of bots in different maps and come away with some very different encounters.