Exploring the potential of generative AI in games

June 05, 2023

This year's GamesBeat summit had Beamable’s Jon Radoff, Inworld AI’s Kylan Gibbs, Berkeley Synthetic’s Matt White, and Hidden Door’s Hilary Mason discussing generative AI’s potential in games, now and in the future. The perception of generative AI in games is mostly aimed at work usage. However, there’s another angle that presents AI as a content administrator and facilitator.

For instance, a game like Destiny 2, with its bite-sized open-world events, could have AI accomplish a lot if it was there to mix and match the content. Hidden Door’s Hilary Mason had another perception about the potential of AI in games. For her, it isn’t cutting humans out of the process entirely. It’s just shifting them from a production role to a directing role. AI, to her, is a framework for content creators to create with.

Their discussion disclosed the problems associated with AI development. Like many newly popular technologies, there are a whole lot of people in the AI custom software development sphere doing their own thing, and that level of fragmentation needs to be addressed. They propose unification and collaboration between people in AI programming as it could offer a lasting custom software solution in the gaming world.

“The situation right now is a little bit of a Wild West in the generative AI space” - commented Matt White. “AI researchers are not terribly good at creating products. They’re particularly good at creating something and then moving on to something else and just abandoning it. That helps us to create new innovation and that sort of thing, but the market’s fragmented”.

The potential of AI in games is huge. They all agreed that when it comes to AI in games, integration could eliminate the overwhelming feeling that comes when a human oversees a particular thing while gaming. We could see AI playing roles in medical fields as it could help scientists discover new antibodies to fight cancer and match drugs for patients.