The vice president of Amazon Games, Christoph Hartmann, has said that he reckons generative AI will help out in game development.
Speaking to IGN, the exec said that the tech will help mitigate the ballooning budgets that modern triple-A titles require by streamlining work that is tedious. Pressed on concerns about AI replacing workers – as is the fear of many including SAG-AFTRA, which is currently striking over precisely this – Hartmann said that he isn’t concerned about this as Amazon’s games “don’t really have acting”.
“The majority of the team sits in programming and that’s not going to go away because that’s all about innovation. If it takes something, it will be really the boring parts. I think what could be super helpful is localisation,” he said.
“Right now, we’re localising our game into a certain set of languages. Basically, does it commercially make sense to have it in a language, yes or no? Having AI actually will help us.
“That’s why I’m thinking it’s not going to make it cheap, it’s just going to make us translate our games into more languages. Which is great for gamers, because there’s countries which maybe not everyone speaks perfect English and they would love to have in a local language, but they’re half the size. And I think those are where AI will help us. I don’t think it’s something where I think actually will create more likely jobs than it will take jobs away. Technology always, always has done that.
“And by the way, I don’t believe any technology can replace human creativity and the uniqueness… There’s always something special. Humans will be always, when it comes to that, they will be always one step ahead. The machine might get very close. I don’t know what you think, but I don’t think it will be able to translate those unique things into fresh ideas. If you find AI designing games, the game’s going to be all the same.”
While AI is useful in localization – just look at Jali’s work on Cyberpunk 2077 – it is useful that Hartmann insists that the tech will not replace workers, but goes on to say how Amazon wants to use generative AI in localisation… which will no doubt replace some workers.
