Gaming giant Blizzard Entertainment, like other AAA studios and developers, is tapping generative AI to design characters and environments in various titles—but the company draws the line at its flagship multiplayer online game, Warcraft.
In May, The New York Times reported that Blizzard Entertainment had deployed a proprietary AI tool internally and warned employees against using third-party platforms to prevent intellectual property leaks.
Blizzard Entertainment has used machine learning to perform tasks that humans can't or are too difficult to do, Warcraft franchise director John Hight told IGN at the recent Game Developers Conference.
“Putting armor on the characters—you see how many different characters we have—our artists have had to go through it before and build it for the human form and then go and restructure all that stuff. Different body shapes and horns and big noses and tails and all that,” he told the game's news outlet. “This is not a very interesting job for them.”
However, he acknowledges the tension in employing AI in innovation efforts.
“I think the artists in the group have a fear that AI might put them out of business and they certainly don't want to use their work without their permission or without credit or whatever, and so I think. We're all dealing with that,” Hayt said. “Rights issues, how far are we using this technology? , but we are not using it.
“We don't use generative AI in WoW,” he explained.
Even before the generative AI craze kicked off last year with GPT-4, Blizzard said they were pushing the idea of using machine learning to the point where 90% of the work would be done for the artist.
“It's really well done,” Hight said. The artists liked that the technology took out the “stressful” part of their work, he added, adding that it “allowed us to make a lot of different armor.”
In October, tech giant Microsoft completed its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Next month, Microsoft and M12 Ventures portfolio company Inworld AI announced the development of generative AI tools for video games, which the companies say is intended to empower developers.
Still, not everyone is on board.
“I hate this,” Mary Kenney said on Twitter in response to the Inworld AI news at the Game Awards. The co-narrative director of Marvel's upcoming Wolverine PS5 game on Sleeper Games continued, “As a member of your future class, this does not honor or respect our work and you should be ashamed of yourself for devaluing artists in this way.
The threat of generative AI replacing actors and writers was also one of many points of contention during the months-long SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike.
Blizzard Entertainment did not immediately respond to Decrypt's request for comment.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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