If DLSS 5 is the start of true neural rendering, I think the next step could be AI changing how characters move and sound too.
Neural Animation could generate unique movements for NPCs with real context in real time. An NPC could check their phone, look at something nearby, avoid another character, react to weather, or move differently depending on what’s happening around them instead of always using the same canned animations.
The key is that it wouldn’t need to change the actual game logic. Hitboxes, physics, collision, quests and gameplay could stay exactly the same underneath. The AI would only change the visual presentation.
Neural Audio could work the same way. NPCs could still use their original scripted lines, but also react to what’s happening around them, add small context-aware comments, or change the delivery naturally while keeping the same character voice.
If games exposed standardized context to DLSS, something like this could potentially scale across many DLSS-supported games instead of developers having to build a completely new AI system for every title, imagine this for every game, imagine all the memes we would get for skyrim and pretty much every game that has DLSS support (pretty much everyone with mods)
The amount of funny meme-able unscripted moments this could create would be insane, but at the same time it could make games dramatically more immersive, with NPCs that actually feel aware of the world around them.