Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida has expressed his optimistim about the potential impact of AI tools on game development.
The effects that AI could have on creative industries as it evolves has been a hot topic as of late, but Yoshida believes that the role of the people using these tools will not be diminished to the point of irrelevance.
Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida believes that AI tools can bring efficiency to game development without diminishing the role of creative minds
“[AI] is a tool. Someone has to use the tool,” Yoshida told The Guardian in a recent interview.
“AI can produce very strange things, as you must have seen. You really have to be able to use the tool well. AI will change the nature of learning for game developers, but in the end development will be more efficient, and more beautiful things will be made by people.
“People might not even need to learn programming any more, if they have learned how to use these tools of the future. The creativity is more important, the direction, how you envision what you want.”
Yoshida’s current role at the company revolves around supporting external independent studios who have interesting ideas for games.
One of the pitches he was sent by a small team of students had “amazingly beautiful graphics” made using the Midjourney AI art generator.
Aside from giving smaller teams resources they otherwise couldn’t tap into with ease, he also noted that in the future, “AI could develop interesting animations, behaviours, even do debug for your program.”
The games industry has always managed to turn technological advancement into fun, in his view, and he thinks AI will be no different.
In addition, it could also contribute to bringing more varied and interesting games to the forefront while helping avoid homogeneity among the list of titles that get highlighted at the end of the year.
“The industry keeps growing and growing, and I hope it keeps supporting and chasing creative ideas and people who try to work on new things. You don’t want to see the Top 10 games every year being almost the same, all games becoming service games … That would be a bit boring, for me.”
Whether or not his prediction turns out to be true is something we’ll undoubtedly see for ourselves sooner or later.
But while AI may help make better games in the future, you’ll find several excellent PlayStation exclusives now available on PC by following the link at the top of this article.
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