The Witcher and Cyberpunk developer CD Projekt Red is the most recent company to pontificate on using AI in gaming. During CD Projekt Red’s latest earnings briefing, Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said there are “meaningful” and “real” advantages to using the technology.
The corporate is already implementing such technologies “mainly within the productivity areas” and thus far that is where the “largest advantages” have stemmed from, he explained, as reported by GamesRadar. A developer won’t have the ability to make use of AI to make a complete game, though, and humans will remain essential to the method, he said.
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“The advantages are real, they’re meaningful; however it’s not a situation–and I’m unaware of such a situation–where AI could ‘sit down and make games.’ That is our take. It doesn’t suggest it is not gonna be useful, however it’s not gonna be making The Witcher 5, or 6, or anything like that,” Nowakowski explained.
Nowakowski also pushed back against the concept that the mass layoffs happening within the video game industry today are resulting from AI’s acceleration. As an alternative, he said the cuts are largely the results of games being canceled.
“Some studios have been going through turmoil; there have been some project closures and so forth, which led to many redundancies within the gaming industry; we have all seen that–it’s been very dramatic in lots of cases. But, literally kill me here, but I do not recall a single time when it could be attributable on to AI. No less than I do not learn about that.”
And searching to the long run, if AI is adopted more broadly, Nowakowski doesn’t imagine it can result in net job losses overall. “I do not imagine that,” he said.
This echoes what others have said, pointing to previous labor revolutions that impacted some jobs within the short term but boosted total employment overall on an extended timeline. Recently, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said employees whose job is “the duty” could also be at the best risk.
The AI issue continues to be controversial, partially due to how the term is defined. Developers have been using versions of AI to make games for a long time, in any case. One in all the most recent types of AI is generative AI, and it’s baked into products that many game developers use, including Unreal Engine and Photoshop, amongst others. Recently, Larian’s CEO drew backlash for his comments on how the developer might use AI, and he plans to reply more questions on this in January.