The entertainment sector is one of the largest and most diverse fast moving creative industries in the world so what does AI mean for its future and how will this navigated.
How is AI being used ?
Over recent years a number of leading development companies in the games region have been slowly beginning to integrate AI in an attempt to improve workflow and speed up production times all with the aim to help with trying to maximise profits and get the most out of a project before moving onto the next. It started with using AI as a tool to help with heavy tasks such as rendering work and optimization which is notoriously an exhausting task which would require a large workforce to complete this but since the introduction of AI they have been able to reduce the time and work needed. This does not only benefit the company as they have now been able to partner with other companies to allow the users of software to use AI as a tool to reduce the requirements to run the software and make it more accessible for a larger range of people.
This all sounds like a good thing but there are a number of harmful problems caused by AI which impacts not only consumers but also independent creatives in this sector.
Image Credits : Oursky.com / GitHub
How is AI impacting this sector ?
Since the introduction of AI this has resulted in a shift in what employers are looking for as those who work on and create games don’t necessarily need to know how to code and develop as AI is able to do this for them which now allows for less qualified people to enter the industry and as a result can cause delays during production where the companies then use AI to combat this which ends up with a repetitive cycle where eventually a game is mostly AI generated and created which results in the consumer receiving a lower quality product with a number of issues which has become more prevalent in recent years.
Rayne (Games Dev) : “AI is a crutch and allows people to achieve positions in an already competitive field without having the actual skills.”
Alongside this there are a number of people who refuse to use AI while others are which continues to put them at a greater disadvantage despite the fact that the field is already competitive. Now this begs the question as to why this is.
Rayne (Games Dev) : “I would never use AI even if it means it’ll be harder for me to get a job or for my own games to compete because I believe game development is a skill that you should learn rather than let something else do it for you.”
Given the above it’s clear that in its early stages there are a number of issues to address in regards to AI and how it is used and to what extent it should be present during the development process.
Image Credits : Hp.com