Xbox is using AI to make games in a disturbing vision of next gen gaming

Microsoft has made a major annoucement about using AI in gaming, that they hope will change the way video games are made forever.

Last year, when Xbox announced their plans for a next gen console, they promised that it would deliver ‘the largest technical leap you’ve ever seen in a hardware generation.’ That seemed like absurd hyperbole at the time, given the increasingly small improvements seen in recent generations, but Microsoft never said anything about a graphical leap.

The best guess has always been that they’re talking about something to do with AI, which Microsoft has a natural advantage with when compared to any other company – even though Google has also been experimenting with AI game creation.

They haven’t discussed their next gen plans again since, so we can’t be sure, but they have just unveiled a new AI-base development tool, which sounds great if you want all your future games to play like artless AI slop.

The new Muse AI model is intended to help developers create elements of games, including 3D worlds that have realistic physics. The environments can be generated according to images or controller inputs, similar to how 2D image generation already works.

With 2D artwork, and voiceovers, the AI creations are based on sampling existing work, often without the permission of the original owner, although in this case Microsoft claims they’re only using their own first party games as reference.

‘This allows the model to create consistent and diverse gameplay rendered by AI, demonstrating a major step toward generative AI models that can empower game creators,’ says Fatima Kardar, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of gaming, on Xbox Wire.

Although Microsoft has a head start with AI, due to its size and all its other divisions that are working on similar tech, most other publishers have indicated that they intend to use AI in the future or are already doing so.

EA used it extensively in its recent College Football game, to replicate the faces of more obscure athletes, that it’d be too time consuming or expensive to have a human do.

That sort of work does make sense to automate, given the ever increasing amounts of time and money needed to make modern games, although it’s unclear how much it actually saves of either.

Not every game company is in favour of AI though and Nintendo has made it clear it’s not interested in using AI for any substantial game creation work, insisting they want to keep their games ‘special.’

A more surprising sceptic is Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick, who oversees everything from Rockstar Games to NBA 2K, and had some very interesting things to say about AI in a recent discussion with GamesIndustry.biz.

‘Artificial intelligence is an oxymoron, there’s no such thing. Machine learning, machines don’t learn. Those are convenient ways to explain to human beings what looks like magic,’ he said.

‘The bottom line is that these are digital tools and we’ve used digital tools forever. I have no doubt that what is considered AI today will help make our business more efficient and help us do better work, but it won’t reduce employment.’

You can only hope he’s right but, as ever, it will be the commerical success of AI games which will be the true determining factor in how much the technology is used in the future.

‘Although it’s still early, this model research is pushing the boundaries of what we thought was possible. We are already using Muse to develop a real-time playable AI model trained on other first party games, and we see potential for this work to one day benefit both players and game creators.’

One of the demos Microsoft has shown involves generating graphics on the fly that react to each other and the environment realistically. The frame rate and resolution is very low, but it’s only a matter of time before that’s improved.

Muse is also intended to help optimise older games for modern hardware – in other words remasters and backwards compatibility won’t be done by humans anymore but by AI.

Somewhat surprisingly, the guinea pig for the technology has been obscure Ninja Theory game Bleeding Edge, with the Hellblade developer collaborating with Microsoft Research, who are also based in Cambridge.

‘We don’t intend to use this technology for the creation of content,’ said Ninja Theory studio head Dom Matthews, via The Verge. ‘I think the interesting aspect for us that’s exciting, is how can we use technology like this to make the process of making games quicker and easier for our talented team, so that they can really focus on the thing that’s really special about games: the human creativity.’

That all sounds good in theory but the things the demos are showing certainly seem like content and yet anyone that’s played a roguelike with randomly-generated levels will know that a hand-crafted map is always infinitely more interesting.

At the end of the day AI’s use in video games is the same as any artistic field, in that not only does it remove human creativity from the process, but it can only work by plagiarising existing art made by a human.

It’s especially worrying as the video games industry continues to shed staff at an alarming rate, with multiple layoffs already this week and over 25,000 jobs lost since 2023.

Whether Microsoft is being disingenuous or not, about how it intends to use AI, there are certainly other companies that seem all to eager to replace human creators with generative AI. And with a new generation of hardware on the horizon that is a disturbing thought.

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