Embracer Group put out their plans for AI in game development

After killing off and selling off various studios and causing lots of job losses, Embracer Group have put out their latest annual report and they have big plans for AI.

Embracer Group control the likes of THQ Nordic, PLAION, Coffee Stain, Amplifier Game Invest, DECA Games, Easybrain, Asmodee Group, Dark Horse Media, Freemode and Crystal Dynamics – Eidos. They have around 106 game development studios under their belt.

It was only a matter of time of course until they started talking up AI, as with other major game developers and publishers, and basically every big company that exists — they're all trying to shove AI into something so they can say "hey look we have AI too!".

Embracer think AI and large language models (LLMs) will empower their developer teams and say they don't want AI to replace people. From the annual report in their Risk and Mitigation overview it states:

AI has the capability to massively enhance game development by increasing resource efficiency, adding intelligent behaviors, personalization, and optimization to gameplay experiences. By leveraging AI, we create more engaging and immersive experiences that provide each player with a unique, dynamic, and personalized experience. We also see great opportunities for AI in game development speed, logistics and planning. Embracer Group also understands the potential risks associated with the use of AI. Our aim is to empower our employees with AI applications.

So what they've done is create a "Group AI Policy" that includes various guiding principles, risk assessment, and a risk framework that they're implementing across their companies with the idea being "human empowerment". Here's what Tomas Hedman, Head of Privacy & AI Governance at Embracer Group, had to say about it:

"Certainly, one of the major risks for a company is not to use AI, as this would mean a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis other industry players. Most companies will move forward on AI integration in different ways. For us, it is the way that we do this that is the most critical element.

We do not want to replace people with AI, we want to empower them. This is the core of our human-centric approach to leveraging the potential with AI.

It’s not just that AI enables our developers to do even more, and to become more efficient on certain tasks, it will also open up coding to a broader group of developers. Entry into the industry might be easier for individuals with disabilities who, for instance, cannot use a keyboard as easily as others.

AI is trained on historical data, which tilts in a certain direction. As a result, you can end up with imbalanced automated decision-making. Let’s say you’re building a village. If you use AI for this, depending on how it’s trained and the decisions it takes, you may end up with a village with a demography that displays some sort of imbalance.

As AI models become more powerful, we can leverage their capacity also in the creative process, for example, by identifying inconsistencies in scripts and storytelling. There will be tremendous benefits for our creative teams regarding scriptwriting, image creation, idea generation, quality control, and more. And, as models become more human-like, the interaction between players and AI-supported functions will be much more dynamic. If in a game scenario you bargain, AI can remember this the next time. That makes the whole gaming experience much more interesting and lifelike."

It's worth noting that in the last GDC Survey, it showed that 31% of devs were already using AI.

What are your thoughts on this?