In a recently released corporate strategy presentation, Hideaki Nishino—President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment—offered a segment flush with hype for generative AI and plans to use the technology extensively. “At PlayStation, our goal is always to be the best place to play and the best place to publish,” reads the first bullet. “We see AI as a powerful tool to help us in this mission,” reads the next.
What follows are pages of slides extolling the virtues of generative AI technology. “AI is lowering barriers to creation, accelerating development cycles, and enabling more creators to enter the market,” reads the deck.
The presentation specifically mentions automating workflows, improving productivity, and “accelerating areas like quality assurance, 3D modeling, and animation through new, AI-powered tools.”
“For example, our teams created a tool we call ‘Mockingbird’ that quickly animates 3D facial models based on performance captures. Importantly, we are not replacing human performers, but rather optimizing how we process the data from these live captures…”
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“We’ve already seen teams at Naughty Dog, San Diego Studio, and others adopt the tool, including in released titles like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.” The slide is accompanied by an image showing Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered‘s Aloy alongside visuals showing prompts and inputs used for hair modeling.
Later slides show how AI tools are used to enable “new types of experiences for fans” including Gran Tursismo’s “Sophy” AI-powered racing agent, and other, as-yet unnamed NPC prototypes. AI is also touted as part of PlayStation’s current platform business, ensuring transactions are routed properly and promising more curation tools.
AI was mentioned in several other areas of the presentation (which included plans for the music and movie businesses, among others), but it’s notable that the PlayStation section was dominated by AI discussion and use cases.
Developers are largely unsure about—or negative on—AI
While the business class hails generative AI as the greatest thing since humanity discovered fire, developers are much more wary of the technology. GDC Festival of Gaming’s most recent State of the Industry Survey showed that overall 52 percent of professions think AI is already showing a negative impact on the industry. That was up from 30 percent of respondents from the year before.
Workers in visual and technical art (64 percent), game design and narrative (63 percent), and game programming (59 percent) expressed the most unfavorable views.
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GDC Festival of Gaming and Game Developer are sibling organizations under Informa Festivals.
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief, GameDeveloper.com
Danielle is the editor-in-chief of Game Developer, with previous editorial posts at Fanbyte, VICE, and Polygon. She’s also a lecturer in game design at the Berklee College of Music, and a hobbyist game developer in her spare time.