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Artificial intelligence has made a big impact on most creative fields in recent years. While the possibilities are vast, we should be careful to ensure all these rapid changes are beneficial.
What Is Generative AI and How Can Games Use It?
Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the programmatic generation of content like images, music, and more.
When it comes to video gaming, the sky’s the limit for generative AI. Just some of the areas that this new technology may touch on include:
Generative AI is a fun field with some brilliant people working in it. But I fear there are enough downsides for gaming that we should be wary of.
Industry Job Losses
Whatever ethical or legal dilemmas surround AI, most people agree on one outcome: jobs in certain roles will be lost. Maybe current artists have to retrain, and maybe new disciplines arise, but the goal of generative AI is to make some tasks easier and faster, and job losses are an inevitability.
Certain jobs are bound to rise up, then fall out of fashion as the progress of technology marches on. But losses at scale, in a short period, will impact individuals and the wider industry. 2023 and 2024 have been terrible years for the gaming industry, with at least 20,000 job losses so far.
Automation Devalues Creativity
Althoughartists can benefit from generative AI, it’s pretty clear that we lose something if we remove the human element from artistic productions. Could an AI ever replicate the creativity inherent in bizarre games like Baba Is You, the humor and satire in a game like The Stanley Parable, or the mind-bending psychedelic twists of Super Mario Wonder?
Much of the visual AI art we’ve seen so far has been of a similar style, an unreal,uncanny valley of AI slop. As someone who grew up observing huge progress in graphical power, I’ve noticed how much more varied gaming has become as an art form. AI threatens to turn the dial back.
Open-Ended Content May Be Offensive or Unsuitable for the Audience
How can you audit your content when you don’t know quite what it may be at launch? If your generative AI has too much agency, it may start using words you don’t like or creating imagery that is inappropriate for your audience.AI can be biased,so it may end up offending the audience or creating games that are lacking in diversity.
There have been many cases of AI going rogue, using rude language or bigoted words. Some of the issues surrounding the safety of self-driving cars apply here; if an AI creates undesirable content, who exactly is to blame?
Is AI Just Another Bandwagon?
While gaming at its best can be innovative, it has quite a conservative tendency to latch onto a singular idea. We’vesuffered microtransactions, fallen victim toscam NFT games, and heard countless claims about crypto in gaming that have failed to deliver.
Each of these much-hyped technologies has seen companies falling over themselves to be involved, often without asking why they should. I’m concerned that companies aren’t listening to what gamers actually want and, instead, are simply rushing to introduce AI for the sake of it.
Are There Any Upsides?
I can see some valid uses for AI in gaming. Such cases would provide a clear tangible benefit and wouldn’t threaten existing jobs or creativity.
For example, an AI could act as a translator for player names, generating audio dialogue dynamically. This would be impractical any other way than programmatically, and would probably require some form of AI to pronounce any name realistically.
This is a small niche, though. There are enough concerns that I think we should go lightly, at a slower pace than I fear we already are.
