LogIn"I felt that we were throwing away our humanity."
Activision
The topic of AI infiltration is nothing new nowadays and has been discussed over and over again in the past year. However, WIRED managed to find some interesting information about how the technology is used at Activision and what artists had to deal with after Microsoft laid off 1,900 from the studio and the Xbox department.
One of the artists, under the pseudonym of Noah, shared that in spring 2023, Activision's then-CTO Michael Vance sent a message praising artificial intelligence and saying it held "a ton of promise." Later, the studio approved the use of Midjourney and Stable Diffusion for concept art.
According to the artist, the company assured its staff that generative AI would not replace them and would not be used for final game assets, but soon, it sold an AI-generated cosmetic for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
"I felt that we were throwing away our humanity," Noah said. Activision, in turn, threw away a sizable chunk of its employees.
Activision
AI is used almost everywhere, believes Violet, a game developer and technical artist. "It’s here. It’s definitely here, right now. I think everyone’s seen it get used, and it’s a matter of how and to what degree. The genie is out of the bottle, Pandora's box is opened."
"There's a ton of anxiety for artists across the board with AI," shared Molly Warner, an environment artist who was working on Overwatch at Activision's sibling company, Blizzard Entertainment, when the emails started coming. "Pretty much everyone I know is vehemently against the use of AI-generated images."
Interestingly, Blizzard doesn't allow developers to use third-party AI tools but is working on its own. The former CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, expressed mostly favorable opinions on the tech last year: "One of the things that I’ve experienced over the last year is that same feeling that I had when I saw that first Macintosh, about how meaningful the impact of AI would be on society, both positive and negative."
Activision is not the only company that is interested in its own AI tools, of course: Riot Games was also experimenting with generative AI for internal use, "but it never got a lot of traction." The company has "teams exploring AI tools that could improve the player experience in ways that align with our values. We know AI is a complex issue, and will be transparent with players about our intentions," its head of tech research told WIRED.
In contrast, CD PROJEKT RED's associate director Paweł Sasko has recently spoken against using the technology in game development, at least for now, saying that if people use it to reduce costs, "it will just lead to reduction of quality."
At the end of the WIRED report, the veteran AAA games developer Violet said that AI itself isn't evil and "can help solve complex problems in the world, or do things no one wants to do," but it's bad when the end goal is to maximize profits.
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