One of the many controversies going on right now in the world of video games and beyond is that of the use of artificial intelligence to generate content. As in, to use a computer program to make something instead of hiring a person to do it. The reason many are up in arms about this is that AI-generated content often doesn’t have the true quality of a piece that a human created, but some companies don’t mind…because it saves them money. Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick had a chat with CNBC recently, and he mentioned what he felt was the future of AI in the gaming space.
Specifically, he noted that with his team, they’d want to use it to create “efficiencies” to help with game development:
“We are seeing some good, early results on creating efficiencies. By the way, efficiencies is not code for reducing employment. Efficiencies is code for taking away mundane tasks so people can focus on more interesting and more creative tasks.”
He’s not the first person to mention something like this, and if this is solely the thing that Take-Two Interactive wants to use AI for, then that’s fine. He went on note, though:
“However, you’re also right in the more creative part of the game, historically, we had to script every single action that a character engaged in because it is interactive. Characters should be able to be trained on that very scripting that has been created by great writers and then interact in a way that’s more natural. So I do see that happening.”
In other words, he thinks that AI could help eliminate the monotony of having to program every single action that a character needs to take. That can indeed take a long time, depending on the game you have and how realistic it is. We know for a fact that Take-Two has very realistic games in its arsenal, with a certain one set to come out in under a year.
And to help put the nail in the coffin on this issue, Zelnick made it clear that he doesn’t think AI will get advanced enough to make a game on its own:
“I think that if you said create a graphic image with AI that looks just as good as an image in a professional piece of entertainment, sure. But can you put it all together and create a massive hit? Probably not.”
Let’s hope we never have to test that theory.
