“Now some f***ing website draws better pictures than me.”
At GDC in late March this year, AI was everywhere.
And this time it feels different.
If nothing else, AI as a topic is a rapidly moving target.
What was once bleeding edge - remember Twitter’s brief dalliance with Dall-E?
- already feels old hat.
Microsoftunveiled its GPT-led Office companion, Copilot, on 16th March.
Google announcedsomething that sounds rather similar on the 14th.
Although there is some overlap there too.
But also because neither’s the games industry itself.
The real reaction was as wide a mix as you could get.
On the one hand: packed-out talks, glib company lines and a cultic kind of reverence.
On the other: scepticism, disdain, and outright rage.
And all manner of opinions in between.
Speaking to Eurogamer after the talk, Collins explained the studio’s stance in more detail.
That number doesn’t even exist in the world.
So this is why we use automation increasingly."
“They’ve been exploring embracing AI tools to see how it can empower them to do more.”
I created this proof-of-concept and proved that it doesn’t work yet.
It works nicely in some cases and fails very poorly in others.
I got several ideas from those successes and failures, which is this project’s main aim."
“How can we enable players from different cultures to talk to each other in a seamless way?
“Someday we’re going to see higher quality games, through using AI tools.
I think it’ll be an incredible helper in terms of certain things.”
But Gardiner also harbours concerns.
“I don’t like the fact that AI is scrubbing the internet stealing art.
It actually bothers me to the core.
As soon as I found out it was doing that I ceased and desisted using those tools myself personally.
It’s not cool.”
“AI is a tool.
AI can have so much more of that output.
Therefore, you’re free to actually produce and open so many more doors.”
So I think this is actually pretty useful.”
“It’s really not up to par with the quality, really, in any way.
So it’s not really suited for that.”
Only now, examples of voices based on celebrities or voice actors are already showing up.
“Of course,” he went on, “that still needs to be regulated, right?
It’s almost like stealing someone’s intellectual property.
Like, when we are just taking and copying someone’s voice…
Still, for CDPR there might be some clear benefits.
Voice acting is “one of the most expensive parts of the game”.
I cannot see it happening, at least at this stage.
Maybe in 10, 15 years.
It is developing really quickly.
But with that really quick development, we can already see its downsides.
Whether you think it should exist or not, it does.
Over the course of 15 minutes he went through a range of AI limitations.
“These are two prompts I fed it, I did not specify ‘white’ or ‘male’.
Whatever your thoughts on diversity, that’s a blind spot to reality.
‘It’s just a tool’ is pacifying language.
You have to remember that not every tool is created with ethics or consequences in mind.”
“Some tools change the course of history, some tools destroy entire industries.
Games can be beautiful, fresh and original, but a lot aren’t.
“AI created content is here, and the lowest hanging fruit is junk food.
[Am I] saying pretentious artsy-fartsiness is the only way to save our industry?
AI can produce, but it cannot judge and it cannot feel.
What we’re trying to do is: how do we scale?
How do we scale or create thousands of new levels?”
Photography came in, everyone thought artists were out of a job, right?
I think we’re seeing something similar now, there’s always an initial fear of the unknown.
The reality is, this sort of technology can be leveraged.
“Midjourney is a nice example.
Midjourney 5 just got released last week and it’s an amazing iteration.
It’s just a different form of design.”
It is really a lot of those more mundane and difficult tasks, you know.”
A recurring theme across the more ethical questions, above all, was one of self-governance.
Instead, they shed workers in the last round of layoffs.
People are “demoralized.
“pic.twitter.com/ySbECsopaB
At Microsoft things are rather similar.
The situation with AI in general has also, predictably, continued to move ahead at pace.
There’s no deeper thought or meaning or an arc, you know, of any sort.
That is not what it can do.
At least right now.”
It’s already useful for some writing, though.
The interviews in this article were partially transcribed using AI, a tool journalists have used for a while.
It certainly makes my life easier, taking away one of the more menial parts of writing interview-led features.
And finally, Ryan Duffin’s fake title for his GDC talk was in fact written by ChatGPT.
