Staff at Epic Games have reportedly been told that they are to use generative AI to create all art for an upcoming Disney shooter title featuring characters from Marvel and Star Wars. As reported by Bloomberg (via VGC), Epic’s developer teams were instructed to go full-on AI-first in a video call last week. The move comes following Disney’s 1.5 billion investment in Epic two years ago, and now, with a project that has seemingly fallen behind so the solution to get back on schedule seems to be using AI to pick up the slack.
“We’re embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do.”
– Epic
Anthropic’s Claude is said to be the tool of choice for the new workflow, with it claimed that some staff are already poking fun in posing fun at who should correct mistakes made by AI in the new process: humans or itself. Previously, EPIC CEO Tim Sweeney had already said that AI was the future for his teams, but the idea was not to lessen the amount of staff involved in projects but to produce greater quantity with higher levels of quality.
“The aim isn’t to do the same stuff with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal.”
– Tim Sweeney, EPIC CEO
The use of generative AI in game development can be a very controversial strategy, but if EPIC manages to not lay off large portions of its teams while producing high-quality games, it could set a standard for other publishers to follow. However, that is currently not the trend, as seen by Microsoft’s Xbox division who has laid off thousands and closed many studios, or Ubisoft with its own layoffs, where both have claimed they do not intend to replace humans with AI, but with so many staff let go, it gets difficult to believe such statements. Only time will tell, and it sounds as if EPIC’s teams are facing an uphill battle in getting the still unannounced Disney title to the finish line, but perhaps Claude is the new teammate they need.
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