Breakdown
- Unsurprisingly, EA CEO Andrew Wilson is keen to get generative AI into videogame development
- In a recent investor call, Wilson states that 50% of development processes could be improved with AI
- Wilson suggests that the company has 40 years of data to feed into the generative AI models
If there's something that doesn't go hand-in-hand, it's AI and art. While the former can help with plenty of boring, monotonous tasks, but art is passion and creativity, something AI can't recreate successfully (at least, right now). Unsurprisingly, EA is looking to speed up videogame development by introducing AI, saying the developers "hunger" for AI.
Plenty of workers are now using AI in their careers, in EA CEO Andrew Wilson's defense. While it wouldn't be the same as using tools like ChatGPT, Wilson says that "we believe that more than 50% of our development processes will be positively impacted by the advances in generative AI", in a recent investor call.
As part of the plan to introduce AI into EA's development teams, Wilson states there is over 40 years worth of data to feed into the generative AI models, although how or what this data is remains unclear. EA is far from the only company bringing AI into game development though, as NVidia has recently introduced the concept of AI NPCs in videogames, partnering up with, you guessed it, Ubisoft.
Wilson says that the company plans to improve efficiency within the next three years, further adding that EA's development teams will use the efficiency and the generative AI to introduce "bigger worlds with more characters and more interesting storylines".
Alongside this, Wilson adds that the developers themselves are desperate for AI tools. "There's a real hunger amongst our developers to get to this as quickly as possible", Wilson states, adding that "the holy grail for us is to build bigger, more innovative, more creative, more fun games more quickly so that we can entertain more people around the world on a global basis at a faster rate."
There's no doubt that there's brilliant uses for AI in the creative industry. Just recently, a country star released a new song using AI, after losing his voice a decade ago due to a stroke. And, Val Kilmer used AI to speak in Top Gun: Maverick. However, in terms of videogames, the technology just isn't there quite yet. A studio attempted to create a game solely with AI, and it didn't go too well.
It's no surprise that EA is attempting to bring AI tools into the workplace, but if developers actually want it, and it makes development easier for them, I don't think that's a bad thing. However, the use of generative AI in videogames could be a slippery slope - one that leads to passionless games devoid of any soul. Let's hope that isn't the case here.