Xbox’s chief financial officer, Tim Stuart, recently shared how excited he was about AI technology being used in game development. During a November 28 summit, Stuart told the audience that it can now translate and localize games, handle coding, and even test games, too, which begs the question: How hard will Xbox lean into AI for its games?
Microsoft, like all big tech companies in 2023, has been investing in the AI arms race, trying to shove the technology into as many apps and websites as possible with no concerns for how it will likely ruin the internet, destroy jobs, and make it harder than ever to know what’s real and what’s fake. But who cares about that when you can ask a search engine to make an image of Kirby doing 9/11? And as part of this AI Gold Rush, executives at these big tech companies are praising the new technology whenever they get a chance.
On Tuesday, as first reported by Tech Raptor, Xbox CFO Tim Stuart spoke at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit about a few topics, including the recent Activision/Blizzard deal. One topic was about AI and game development, and according to Stuart, it will just magically solve all the problems developers have right now with localization, translation, scripting, coding, and dialogue.
“AI can take care of all that,” Stuart claimed. “You now say ‘I need the player to get from A to B’ and instead of having to write thousands of lines of scripting or code, you just have the AI get you from A to B. Things like localization and putting things in new languages.”
Stuart further suggested that games could be tested by “a million AI bots” running through a level to locate places where players might get stuck or where they are more likely to “spend money.” He called all of this “game-changing” for developers. This isn’t the first time an Xbox exec has wishfully thought about using AI to test games.
Another part of Stuart’s speech focused on the idea that AI can make it so anyone can be a game developer, claiming that everyone listening to him—with the help of AI—could go off and develop games.
“The barista at your local Starbucks has an awesome idea for a game and they can now use Copilot and AI to go create a great mobile experience,” Stuart said.
Kotaku has contacted Microsoft about Stuart’s comments.
Of course, this ignores the fact that AI tools could and likely would be used by companies to replace thousands of talented artists, writers, coders, and other developers in order to save money. But if the game industry is good at one thing, it’s laying people off and destroying jobs. So I guess it’s not surprising some of the folks in charge are open to an AI-powered future and all the bland machine-generated content that will bring. And this isn’t just talk. On November 6, Microsoft announced a new business deal to bring AI-generated NPCs and more to Xbox developers and platforms. The tools will be optional for developers. For now.
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