Three-Part Series - The Year In Review -AI

December seems to be the month of reflection when you look back at 2023 and consider where you were last year and where you are today.? This will be a three-part series on my thoughts for this year as we enter a new year. ?The first part will deal with generative AI.

I got excited in late 2022 when ChatGPT took hold and showed the world the possibilities of generative AI, and 2023 saw an accelerated pace in terms of new tools being created and placed on the market. I am a big believer that AI will be just as disruptive as electricity was in the 1880s, and when electricity started to take hold in the world, there was no real infrastructure for it to reach its full potential.? This is precisely where we are today. Nvidia and Intel are building AI chips to help offload the CPU necessary for AI applications. These two companies and others are building the infrastructure necessary for AI to its full potential.

Many people spoke out against AI in the entertainment industry because they feared being replaced by AI.? Yes, people will lose their jobs as generative AI takes hold. Just like other disruptive technologies in the past, people can be retrained to adapt to the new job market.

The other fear is copyright infringement.? These LLMs go out and learn from existing art, entertainment, writing, etc. If you think about it, that is how we learn and grow as well. I use a couple of examples to prove my point. When I studied art in high school and college, I visited several art museums and copied their paintings to learn their style and technique. After a while, I started creating my art by taking all the input I learned in school and at the museums.? You can tell what artists influenced me the most because of the similar art style I was painting.

You can go back in time and look at the styles of paintings over the years.? Look at Impressionism at the turn of the last century.? One artist, Claude Monet, started painting in a style never seen before. Suddenly, other artists looked at his paintings and copied that style, and thus, the movement started. AI, IMHO, is doing the same thing.

You can argue that AI copies pieces of images directly and creates new art from them.? I believe you cannot stop this from happening and should embrace the new reality. ?A good example is when recording labels panic as the first AI-generated ‘hit single’ has appeared. A song featuring AI synthesized versions of hip-hop/R&B artist Drake has garnered over 15 million views, with many fans calling the song far better than anything from the recent oeuvre of either human artist. ?Another famous recording artist, Grimes, did not fear AI but embraced it by saying that anyone could use her voice in AI-generated songs, and she would share 50 percent of the profits on any successful AI-generated song’ using her voice.

How do I see AI generative tools being used in the games industry? I will give you a great example. When we started looking for a strategic partner to fund our new indie studio, we used AI to generate the concepts for our pitch. We did not have a concept artist then and needed to develop art and video pieces that illustrate our game idea. We used Midjourney to do that. This tool is excellent for quickly iterating several gameplay ideas on our pitch. Usually, it would take two weeks per image with a concept artist to develop one set piece per game concept. ?It took us a day to iterate several art concept pieces to get what we sought.? During the process, AI went places we would not have considered in generating the concept art pieces we later adopted in our game design. This is the power of AI-generated tools.

AI will never replace the craftsmanship of building a fun, engaging game. That is still in the hands of game developers. Embrace AI as a tool.

AI can quickly iterate on game ideas and content. Use it to develop encounters, simulate awareness with NPCs, and perform mundane tasks. The ability to iterate quickly allows developers to find new and engaging player experiences.