Yeah, the easiest thing to implement is omnipotent AI. The code for the AI is executed within the game engine, so you have complete access to any information you want.

You can just query the player position at any point in time, even if there’s a wall between the NPC and the player. It requires extra logic to not use the player position in such a case, or to only use the rough player position after the player made a noise, for example.

Of course, the decision-making is a whole separate story. Even an omnipotent AI won’t know how to use this information, unless you provide it with rules.

I’m guessing, what OP wants is:

1. limiting the knowledge of the AI by just feeding it a rendered image like humans see it, and
2. somehow train AI on this input, so it figures out such rules on its own.