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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: etc.

"some tools have changed the course of history, others have destroyed the entire industry. as for what will happen to AI, time will tell."

From Web3 to blockchain to meta-universe, there is always a hot topic at the annual game developers conference (GDC), and GDC,AI has become a hot topic for game developers at the end of March this year.

At least 20 GDC talks this year have focused on AI. Companies such as Unity have also released news about developing AI tools, and some manufacturers have conducted various offline demonstrations. At first glance, it seems to mean that the gaming industry has a United position on AI and firmly believes that it will develop rapidly. In fact, game practitioners have a mixed view of AI. Some people show almost fanatical worship of AI, while others feel skeptical, contemptuous, and even angry about it.

In a speech titled "the Future of AI in the Game" (The Future of AI in Gaming), Steve Collins, chief technology officer of King, Paul Stephen Nuke, creative director of Candy Legend, and several guests from Sony, Unity and Level Up talked about how game companies can take advantage of AI technology. Twenty minutes before the start of the event, the room was already full of people, and dozens more were waiting in line outside, as if hoping that someone would leave early and make room.

Years later, nearly 30,000 people flocked to San Francisco below the Tropic of Cancer to attend the event. Collins explained in detail King's position on AI, and they were eager to transform into a "AI forerunner company" after the acquisition of Peltarion, a Swedish company called AI in 2022. Today, the company mainly uses AI technology for testing, so that the game can adjust the difficulty of the level according to the level of different players. According to Collins, Candy Legend has more than 13000 levels and more than 230 million monthly players, so the development team must rely on AI to test the game. "if you don't have millions of players playing these levels all the time, it's hard to test them. In this case, AI will act as a human being to do these things."

"in order to provide a personalized gaming experience, we need to hire millions of designers and testers, which is simply not realistic …... that's why we're increasingly using automated processes."

But Collins also stressed that King sees AI as a "tool". "designers first use AI to design and adjust levels, and then testers will use AI to test the levels to see if they can achieve the results we want."

After completing the acquisition, King set up an AI and machine learning team of more than 50 people to support the company's product research and development business. We can see from another AI keynote speech that Microsoft uses AI in a very similar way to King. " "for decades, our QA team has been testing with scripted robots and actively exploring how to use AI to improve productivity," said Kate Reiner, technical director of The Coalition, a research and development studio for the War Machine series. She described AI as a "powerful tool for artists" and mentioned that AI could be used to crack down on cheating players in online games. For example, if a player withdraws from a multiplayer game, he can dynamically adjust the technical level of his non-human opponent with the help of AI. AI can also assist testers in finding vulnerabilities before the game is officially released.

Zhang Haiyan (Haiyan Zhang), general manager of Microsoft Games AI, expressed similar optimism and believed that she and Reina could work together in a complementary way. "I often visit studios to find out what types of custom AI models and algorithms they are working on because we believe that game studios are best at driving game AI innovation."

A proof-of-concept (Proof of Concept) prototype developed by Keijiro Takahashi, an engineer at Unity Japan, is an example. He integrates ChatGPT into the Unity engine so that users can quickly create objects or light sources by typing simple text into the editor.

However, Keijiro Takahashi also explained the usability of the AI plug-in. "it doesn't really come in handy yet. Sometimes it works well, but in some cases it works particularly badly. I get a lot of inspiration from these success and failure examples, which is the main purpose of this project."

Reina also believes that AI has raised the standards of the entire industry, while Zhang Haiyan has stressed several times that AI brings great opportunities to improve the ease of use and inclusiveness of games. " How can we allow players from different cultures to communicate seamlessly, and how can we ensure that players with different abilities can play games on a level playing field? Over time, developers will use AI tools to create higher-quality games that will give players an experience they have never seen before. "

The future is bright, but it doesn't always work at the moment. Developers have a more complex view of AI than the speakers at GDC, some curious about AI, others cautiously optimistic or even disgusted. Jeff Gardner, the former project manager of the radiation and Ancient Scrolls series and founder of independent studio Something Wicked, says AI is likely to be a very useful tool, especially when it comes to searching, researching or solving problems. It will be an incredible helper.

But Gardner has his own concerns. "fundamentally, I do think AI may undermine creativity. What annoys me is that AI is stealing other people's works of art from the Internet, which is why I stopped using AI tools. I don't approve of that."

Pavel Sasco, the mission director of Cyberpunk 2077 and the lead designer of Wizard 3, is not too worried about the risks posed by AI. Part of the reason is that he feels that the AI at this stage is not good enough to be competent for the work of artists, let alone replace them. Of course, AI is already able to do some seemingly useful work.

"like many R & D studios, we do a lot of research and sometimes work with other companies to see how to use AI in our work to speed up progress." Sascoe said. He revealed that CDPR has found that AI can provide a lot of potential help in all aspects related to images. For example, AI technology can come in handy when the development team creates an early conceptual design or makes a preliminary inspection of the work.

"AI is a tool that artists can try to use to study possible directions and try to create different content. As artists, each of us will be influenced by our own experience, experience, knowledge and ideas when creating. From this point of view, AI can produce more content. At the conceptual stage, AI can help us come up with more diverse ideas and take us to places we've never been before, so I think it's very useful. "

Reina, Zhang Haiyan and the director of Microsoft's AI department shared their views on GDC. Sascoe talked about the second potential use of AI-ChatGPT, and everything related to text generation. But he believes that AI technology is not mature enough in this respect. "A lot of big companies are studying how to get the screenwriting team to use AI tools." For example, there is already a "Horse and Kill 2" AI module on the market that allows players to talk to NPC characters. "but you will also find that the dialogue output of ChatGPT is very bad and the quality is not good at all." Sascoe believes that it might be better to use ChatGPT to generate a short response from NPC to the player's actions.

In addition to the above two uses, he believes that AI can be used to dub characters, but this is bound to be controversial. The gaming industry has been using voice generation tools since about a decade ago, but it can only generate robot sounds and meet basic needs before live actors dub their characters. But today, AI voices that mimic the voices of celebrities or dubbing actors have emerged.

"it needs supervision, right?" "it's like stealing someone else's intellectual property," Sascoe said.... I think proper regulation is necessary, and game companies must be authorized to use sound and ensure that it is used in an appropriate way. "

Nevertheless, AI dubbing can still bring some obvious benefits to CDPR. Sascoe pointed out that role dubbing is one of the most expensive places in game development, and the company needs to invite actors from all over the world to participate in the recording, and the whole process will cost a lot of budget. especially when working with stars like Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Sasha Grey. " In this case, dubbing costs account for a large part of the project budget. It would be great if AI could provide support, provide an advance version, fix some wrong lines, or use it when you have to change your lines at the last minute. "

"I want to emphasize that while AI can play a role in all aspects of game development, I don't think it can replace art, screenwriting or dubbing actors in any way, at least not at this stage. More than a decade from now, things may change because AI is developing so fast. However, with the rapid development, we also see some of its shortcomings. For example, Midjourney cannot generate many different styles of pictures, and the style is too monotonous to see at a glance. The same is true of AI dubbing and text generation, they are just tools. "

Another application scenario of ChatGPT-NPC and players argue that at this year's GDC Animation Summit, Ryan Duffin, animation director of Microsoft's first studio and Undead Labs, the developer of "rotten country", also gave a speech on AI. He also prepared a song for the live audience to play at the end of the speech. At the beginning of the song, the lyrics of the chorus read: "I'm not a machine. I have an art degree, but now some damn websites can draw better pictures than me."... "

At first, Duffin's speech was titled "exploring the intersection of AI and feedback Culture in Game Development: lessons learned and Future opportunities". But Duffin admitted that it was just a gimmick and that the real topic of the speech should be "no big deal: negation, criticism, and the machine that will destroy us all".

"when I started thinking about the zeitgeist of 2023, I immediately thought of artificial intelligence and feedback culture." "of course I'm not an AI expert," Duffin said. "if I express any insightful ideas, it must come from someone smarter than me."

In theory, it seems that AI will eliminate the need for human expertise, which is also in line with many people's vision of the future trajectory of AI. In the discussion around AI, professionals and creators are either angry or casually accept that AI is just another tool in the process of human progress. AI is indeed a tool, but its advocates make no secret of their position and try to drive away experts like us with nice words like 'democratization'. "

"AI doesn't love you or hate you, but you're made up of atoms, and that can be used to do a lot of things."

In the 15-minute speech, Duffin talked about the limitations of AI. " Six months ago, some of Midjourney's prompts related to the work of paid artists. Its proponents openly admit that while AI has great potential, it also poses a threat. As game developers, we also need to consider testing it to make sure the game is not full of vulgar content. In addition, there are still problems with the legitimacy of the training model, we cannot publish things that cannot be verified, and the material of AI works is often difficult to trace. "

"I don't want to be an awakening policeman, but as you can see, every character drawn by Midjourney is beautiful, and no one is plain or ugly... in AI's understanding, 'unattractive' seems to equate to 'not a model', even stockbrokers are fitness athletes."

Duffin showed a set of slides showing the result of using "a very successful but less attractive Wall Street stockbroker" as a hint for Midjourney to create: four ridiculously muscular white men in tight suits. Next to the stockbroker, Duffin also generated four other pictures using the prompt "a friendly but less attractive doctor sitting in the office." the doctors turned out to be white men with moustaches and white coats. White men who look well-behaved, without exception.

AI doesn't have his own ideas, but the paintings make us feel ironic. "I didn't specify 'white' or 'male' in the prompt, no matter what people think of diversity, this is indeed a blind spot in AI's drawing. We can't ignore this problem on the grounds that AI is just a tool. We must remember that morality and consequences must be fully considered before human beings create any tools in history. " Duffin said.

The next slide shows images of wheels, early cars, guns and the Internet. "some tools change the course of history, others destroy the entire industry. I can't predict how AI will affect the development of human society. Time will tell."

Duffin wrote in the lyrics: "it can steal the appearance of an artist and imitate the voice of an actor." it will write a book as the author, leaving all of us with no choice. Some people say that it can be democratized, but it is already using it to make money and money laundering; when we starve, our tech brothers are jubilant. " Duffin believes that artists have to work together to promote "tools we have but computers don't have".

"as the homogenization of 3A games becomes more and more serious, even if AI has some strange auto-completion function, how many interactive entertainment products can really challenge players' feelings or emotions? Games can be beautiful, fresh and original, but many products are not. A large number of pirated and copycat games have made players aesthetically tired. In this trend, we do have the risk of being replaced, because our products are like fast food, too routine. "

"for AI, the easiest thing to mass produce is junk food. AI may be better at making cheeseburgers than we are, but we can also cook other delicacies. Compared with machines, the advantage of humans is that they can imagine, criticize, and consciously iterate over the content. AI is productive, but it can neither judge nor feel. Great works of art can move us, but we can't create great works if we can't talk about them critically. "

Using the illusory engine MetaHuman technology and the AI algorithm, it is possible to generate most of the shots for a MV and render them from text descriptions alone. Steve Collins, future King CTO, stressed that although King aims to transform itself into a "AI first" company, it will still employ a large number of testers and will not rely entirely on AI tools. Speaking of the impact of AI on game developers, Collins said: "I have two feelings. First, I am very excited about the development of AI in the past few years. Second, I think we should try to understand how to use AI to give full play to its advantages."

"A lot of people are familiar with this classic analogy: when photography first appeared, people thought that painters would lose their jobs, right? But that obviously didn't happen. In fact, photography has also given birth to a new type of artist, that is, photographers. It is normal for people to feel fear of the unknown at first. However, as AI further stimulates people's creativity, artists will more actively integrate it into the content creation pipeline. "

"Midjourney is a good example. The new version can produce professional photographic pictures, but artists still need to think about how to use this technology to choose the most appropriate results from different pictures according to the established direction. This is also a design, but a new form of design."

If AI technology is widely used in testing, will QA personnel lose their jobs? When asked this question, The Coalition Technical Director Leonard said: "No, AI will only do those relatively monotonous and complex tasks."

Considering that the use of AI may involve a variety of moral issues, game companies should pay attention to self-regulation. Daniel Cruz, director of Microsoft's Office of responsibility AI (Office of Responsible AI), points out that he thinks developers should look at AI development in a growing mindset. "as a tool, the role of AI is to enhance and assist, not to replace." At the same time, three guests from Microsoft repeatedly stressed the importance of hiring diverse employees in order to avoid AI getting involved in potential racial prejudice or other more controversial ethical topics.

But the problem with self-regulation is that no individual, institution or rule can stop a company from self-regulation. Microsoft, for example, disbanded the entire AI ethics and social team in early March. A few days later, Bloomberg revealed that Google had also laid off some of its AI ethics team and issued a "red alert" asking them to speed up research and development and retake the territory seized by Microsoft by abandoning some routine security checks.

The same is true of Microsoft. According to an audio clip of the meeting obtained by the media, John Montgomery, vice president of Microsoft AI, said at the meeting: "Satyanadella and Kevin Scott (Microsoft CEO and CTO) have put great pressure on us to deliver the latest OpenAI model and its follow-up products to customers as soon as possible."

Using AI technology to involve players in skin creation is worth mentioning. When game developers discussed the potential impact of AI on employment at a GDC conference, the global technology media "Rest of World" said in an article that AI has caused widespread anxiety in China's game art community. It is reported that some artists have been laid off as game companies switch to AI. An anonymous artist revealed that she and many of her colleagues stay up late almost every day for fear of losing their jobs. "I wish I could kill these AI programs... the team has become more efficient, but everyone is more tired."

At the same time, on social media, many Chinese players have set off a wave of resistance to the "digital corpses" generated by AI.

Although these early warning signs have appeared in the game industry, most developers in GDC venues are not worried about being robbed of their jobs by AI. As Pavel Sasco said: "AI can never be a talented writer, because writing is not just about codewords... all AI are based on some language model, and the language model can only predict the next word-without any intention behind it. AI will not do any deeper thinking and express deep meaning or plot, at least not yet."

Interestingly, according to Duffin, the fake title of his GDC speech was written by ChatGPT. "for those who are keen to boast at big conferences and give speeches a sensational topic, AI is amazing!

This article is compiled from: https://www.eurogamer.net/the-games-industrys-response-to-ai-reverence-and-rage

The original title: "The games industry's response to AI?" Reverence and rage "

Original author: Chris Tapsell

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