Exploring the potential of generative AI in games

Beamable’s John Radoff, Inworld AI’s Keelan Gibbs, Berkeley Synthetic’s Matt White, and Hidden Door’s Hilary Mason sat down at the GamesBeat Summit to talk about the potential of generative AI in games, now and in the future.

There’s one thing we can probably all agree on when it comes to AI in games. Anything a person can control in a game can overwhelm a person with complexity. The perception of generative AI in games is mainly focused on the use of work. Much of the conversation there focuses on creativity and how it can affect working people.

But there is another angle. AI as content administrators and facilitators. Think of a game like Destiny 2 with open world events of its size. They’re fun the first few times, but the whole process gets a little old. Imagine what AI could achieve if it was there to mix and match content. Or if it could scale entire events based on the number of people in the area.

This AI approach is kind of central to Hidden Door’s entire business model.

“What we’re building couldn’t be built without the underlying technology,” Mason said. “You can create a similar experience, but you have to put a person in it. They have to improvise and they have to be smart. They must have access to a library of information in their heads that is truly beyond the scale of what we can cognitively process.”

For Mason, that doesn’t cut people out of the process entirely. It just moves them from a producing role to a directing role. Furthermore, the role of AI is not seen as creating the content itself.

It’s a framework for content creators.

Wild West

However, there is a problem. Like many new popular technologies, everyone does their job. That level of fragmentation is a problem that needs to be addressed.

“The situation at the moment … it’s a bit of a wild west in the generative AI space,” commented White. “AI researchers are not very good at building products. They are especially good at creating something, then moving on to something else and just leaving it at that. It helps us create new innovations and things like that, but the market is fragmented.”

It’s the same problem that VR suffers from. Or the Metaverse as a viable thing. People really know that it needs some sort of unification. People really want to make money off of it.

The potential of AI in gaming is huge. It’s hard to overstate how big it can be. If game developers can get their hands on the AI ​​tools that AI enthusiasts believe can exist, it could be a whole new world for game developers.