Square Enix President Resolves to Implement 'Aggressive' AI Strategy

New guard, same as the old guard. You would think after the big NFT loss they would know better than to bet heavily on new tech. Granted AI is gonna be in everything virtual more sooner than later. But creativity is not AI's strong suit. Which is a lot of Squ-enix' bread and butter.

If it speeds up development and reduces costs so that developers can get more creative with their budget and so long as they can still maintain a decent level of quality then I'm actually all for it.

A lot of folks fear monger about the danger of AI, but if used correctly it can automate some mundane functionalities to give developers more time to flex their creativity and make cool things in game.
If they opt instead to use AI to replace creatives, and ship generic games for a quick buck. Then I hope SE reconsiders their long-term strategy.

Waiting for that next HAL or Skynet to create a nice death game.

@throwmeaname Exactly!! People always jump to the conclusion that AI is only used for replacing writers, artists or voice actors, etc. Like you stated, they fail to realise that AI, in the workplace, is mainly used to shorten lengthy and tedious tasks and assist with development.

AI can also be used to restore and remaster low-res assets.
I hope they actually use this AI tech to remaster the backgrounds in their pre-rendered games of old and pre-rendered FMV cutscenes. As long as it's carefully restored.

I saw the "4K remaster" of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - Complete and most of the film was still upscaled from 480p, with some upticks of 1080p. There was even Crisis Core footage that was only 272p. All blown up to 4K, not properly re-rendered.
AI upscaling would probably make the 4K remaster look much better.

@IslandLogic and also get rid of the workforce that the AI is more efficient than thus creating more long term unemployment and misery. Maybe that AI could be used to solve the unemployment it helps create.

Typical SE chasing trends but never starting them.

@DennisReynolds uhhmm I think one could argue that square Enix more or less created the whole rpg template on consoles at least which has been adopted and adapted by just about every other dev that makes rpg's. I'd say that they "were" trend setters back in the day but I'm not so sure now. They did a munson.

@Northern_munkey Oh wow SE created something over three decades ago. Nowadays all they do is chase trends and lose money doing so.

@MrMagic reduce cost? 😂😂they still gonna charge you 70+ for a game. They are all about the $$$$$$ man😂😂

@Northern_munkey ''Maybe that AI could be used to solve the unemployment it helps create.''

It does - just like the industrial revolution before it, the AI revolution will kill some jobs and create others. AI is a tool - nothing more, nothing less. It is only as evil as its corporate overlords allow it to be.

I buzz off the way in which a comment section can be mostly positive or negative depending on who the developer/publisher is in articles like this. The other week there were two articles about developers being hacked and most comments were a lot more sympathetic towards Insomniac compared to the Rockstar article where the majority of the comments sympathised with the actual hacker.

Why is SE so eager to use tech that creates "dead" content?

I hope this will be used in support of projects. Because a studio eek owned for its artistic and story-driven games would suffer heavily if AI was used for anything else.

@PSme I was talking about their costs not ours.

A.i. as a tool is fine as long as there not trying to replace people like the anime industry with translators

Crazy idea but if Square Enix maybe stopped chasing the latest fad and just focused on making more good games, profits would improve.

@DennisReynolds pretty much what I said 🤨

I think AI will be here to stay, using AI for say, dynamic npc behaviour & voice in gta series will be cool I think. I also heard japanese manga will use AI as base translation rather than using localizer, if the translation is good I can see that game developers will also using it for their games. Unlike NFT, AI is here to stay.

@MrMagic yeah I get that 👍🏻 just a shame they will never pass them on to us 😩

I bet everyone is looking for a full AI generated NFT game as a service that will die 5 minutes after release.

I don't remember who it was but someone in the Nintendo Life chat during the September Nintendo Direct said that SaGa Emerald Beyond looks like an AI game. I guess that was the first signs of this announcement then...

People usually fail to see that tech isn't the problem but rather the misguided belief of infinite growth for shareholders that drives to misuse of new tech and undermine the workforce.

As long as it boosts the quality. I don't want to see several similarly designed average quality titles.

Companies are looking towards AI as a way to speed up production times and meet quota more easily and frequently, and it's usually the shareholders who are putting the pressure on these companies to make sure they meet certain targets. I honestly don't mind the use of AI if the end product remains a good quality, but as with the Xbox twitter post at Christmas proved, AI can sometimes not be that great at finer details.

I’m sure this won’t end badly. It’s not as if Squeenix is a company known for chasing trends after the horse has bolted and investing in wildly stupid ideas.

Get ready for Kingdom Hearts 4 to have a more convoluted plot than 3 lol