Square Enix wants to use AI ‘aggressively’, could 'fundamentally change' development
In its traditional New Year's Letter, Square Enix's president has revealed that he intends to go all-in on AI's inclusion in the game development process.
02nd Jan 2024 09:48
Images: Square Enix
Square Enix wants to use AI ‘aggressively’, could 'fundamentally change' development
In its traditional New Year's Letter, Square Enix's president has revealed that he intends to go all-in on AI's inclusion in the game development process.
02nd Jan 2024 09:48
Images: Square Enix
The conversation around AI in video games is getting hotter by the minute, to such a degree that it could seriously burn some of the industry’s leading workers. Now that the SAG-AFTRA strikes have found a happy ending in Hollywood, the attention turns to opportunities to bring computer-generated content to games to lighten the load on studios.
Generative AI is still in a bit of a quiet stage, but the moment it’s ready to go with believable dialogue and effective visual applications in-game, there’s little doubt that there are some teams out there that will be jumping on it as soon as possible (sorry, The FINALS, but your announcers just don't sound great).
And it seems that Square Enix is considering it.
Square Enix wants to go “aggressive” with its AI plans
Of course, we’ve had AI in games for many years, but now, teams are looking to a hopeful future where they can use computer-generated AI systems to run their latest titles - and it seems that as soon as it becomes possible, Square Enix isn’t going to mess around with its application.
President Takasahi Kiryu has written his first ever annual New Year’s Letter as the head of Square Enix, and in it, he mentioned that he was excited to see how generative AI would enhance the efficiency of the company.
“We also intend to be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions,” he says.
“In the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts. In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities.”
AI could “fundamentally change” Square Enix’s development
It seems that Kiryu is excited about the potential that generative AI could have when it comes to practically every corner of creation at Square Enix, indicating that he’s willing to let it teach him entirely new ways of producing quality titles.
“I believe that generative AI has the potential not only to reshape what we create, but also to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming,” he adds.
It’s all a little bit Skynet, and typically, attitudes to AI like this have a tendency to put staff members at risk, but given how far into the rabbit hole Kiryu has already travelled, we can only hope that these things have been considered. AI is cool - but keeping jobs is cooler.
About The Author
Joseph Kime
Joseph Kime is the Senior Trending News Journalist for GGRecon from Devon, UK. Before graduating from MarJon University with a degree in Journalism, he started writing music reviews for his own website before writing for the likes of FANDOM, Zavvi and The Digital Fix. He is host of the Big Screen Book Club podcast, and author of Building A Universe, a book that chronicles the history of superhero movies. His favourite games include DOOM (2016), Celeste and Pokemon Emerald.
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