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Xbox Manager: AI Already Being Used In Xbox Game Development - And Throughout the Game Industry (engadget.com) 38

Posted by EditorDavid from the AI-everywhere dept.
Should generative AI be used for videogame development? Brandon Stirrup, a strategy manager at Xbox, claims Xbox is already using AI, reports Engadget. And he also says that those who say they aren't are merely "pretending." Stirrup deactivated his social media account shortly after (though his posts have been archived elsewhere), igniting conversations about what role generative AI actually has or should have in game development. In some ways, it would be unsurprising to learn that Xbox is using AI to the extent that Stirrup implies. Xbox recently announced the formation of Xbox Labs at least in part as a response to a rising trend of AI-coded game ports; the announcement heavily implied that the new team would use AI as well but didn't say it outright. Xbox owner Microsoft is also a major player in AI development... Developers including Capcom, Square Enix, Sega, Nexon and Activision have all either used AI in their games or pledged to do so. Fortnite developer Epic Games has been particularly up-front about its AI use, and CEO Tim Sweeney has aggressively promoted it on social media...

On the other hand, there are large pockets of the game industry vocally opposed to generative AI. Notably, these tend to be smaller, independent studios without shareholders to impress by touting the cost-savings of AI. These studios include Tunic publisher Finji, Stardew Valley developer ConcernedApe and Clickolding developer Strange Scaffold, among many more. Due to the sheer number and variety of game studios, it's impossible to say just how much of the industry actually uses AI at this point, but claims that "everyone" is using it are clearly false.

There's a similar divide among players about whether generative AI should be embraced or avoided at all costs. While some simply accept AI as part of games going forward, others have pledged to avoid games that use the technology outright due to its environmental costs, labor issues or pure aesthetic preference. That's led to the popularity of tools like a browser extension that makes Steam's AI disclosures more visible and grassroots efforts by developers to implement labels certifying their games as AI-free... Many players and developers alike justify the use of AI in generating code, even if they're opposed to it in other areas.
"Gaming is the only industry slow-walking the transition," Xbox's Stirrup allegedly said, "because users have negative sentiment. Everyone else accepts reality."

"Gaming is the only industry pretending to not use AI."

Xbox Manager: AI Already Being Used In Xbox Game Development - And Throughout the Game Industry More | Reply

Xbox Manager: AI Already Being Used In Xbox Game Development - And Throughout the Game Industry

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  • Regardless of it's veracity, why did we even need to know this opinion to begin with? No one's going to come to your house and beat you up for using AI dude, chill.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      It's known as bully tactics. The original form of cancelling.

      • Repost with paragraph tags:

        I wouldn't mind a required label for it, like the explicit lyrics warning on CD's. Its laguhable to think AI isn't used in games. What are they going to do, have an actor in India mechanical turk every pretend person? That was never a thing. "Make 1000 varying zombie skins" is a fine job for AI.

        Who are you going to pay to sit around and draw up 1000 NPC's? Of course there's AI in games.

        https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do [ieee.org]... [ieee.org] Abstract from 1990: An experiment was co

    • I wouldn't mind a required label for it, like the explicit lyrics warning on CD's. Although its laguhable to think AI isn't used in games. What are they going to do, have an actor in India mechanical turk every pretend person? That was never a thing. Who are you going to pay to sit around and draw up 1000 NPC's? Of course there's AI in games. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/do... [ieee.org] Abstract from 1990: An experiment was conducted where neural networks compete for survival in an evolving population based on t

    • Re:What's with the delusional AI bros? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Sunday November 01, 2026 @11:32AM (#66404533)

      It also depends what AI is used for.

      AI can be used for so many aspects but not all of it would warrant disclosure. Maybe it was used to generate an outline for a story, which was then fleshed out by a human writer to produce the story and plot.

      Or maybe it was used to create a game prototype to see if some concept was "fun". Maybe some new game mechanic or something to see if it integrates well in the world. If they prove successful then the code was re-written by programmers to integrate into the final game.

      Or used to develop test textures used to create initial maps to test them out, then artists designed the final textures.

      For those, AI was used, but it was just used to test concepts and storylines and other things to see if it would work, and likely those are AI uses most people wouldn't mind.

      But if AI was used in place of artists, writers, creatives or programmers in producing the final product you purchase, then that kind of disclosure would be warranted.

      It's like people using AI on the Linux kernel. Most people wouldn't have an issue with AI being used for the code reviews of patches. It gets a lot muddier when it's used to create those patches though.

  • And it was a disaster. It turned into the samurai armor into cylons. When I first saw the screenshots I thought it was somebody making fun of AI instead of actual AI slop. They have the pull the game from steam.

    So yeah we know it's being used in the industry and it's laughably bad and it's damaging the industry and costing the industry money for very little or nothing in return. Stop it already.

    • Re:Sega used is for the Shogun remaster (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday November 01, 2026 @05:36AM (#66404245) Homepage Journal

      It may look bad now, but so did AI generated code at first. Now it's at the point where for a lot of businesses it's more than adequate to replace human developers. I hate to say it because I'm at risk too, but I can't argue with the results.

      A guy at work recently presented a web interface that Claude built for him, for a research project. A year ago that would have been a job for someone on my team. It looks good, it works well, and Claude produced an SBOM and a security audit.

      I don't know how this is going to play out, but as bad as a lot of the AI slop is, I think it's just teething problems.

      • It looks good, it works well, and Claude produced an SBOM and a security audit.

        Since Claude is not a human, Claude cannot sign off on a security audit.

        If a human signed off on Claude's security audit without verifying it themselves, they deserve exactly what they're going to get.

      • The LLMs have injected enough training data that they can find something that looks rather close to a problem that's been solved once before and use that in most cases. It won't be perfect, but a human can usually tune it from there. I'm not sure if I'd trust a security audit from an LLM because they're incapable of doing actual analysis and rely on past data that's going to be heavily weighted towards saying that something is good. That may have been true in isolation, but not when the LLM has combined two
    • Microsoft has just laid off thousands of human developers across dozens of studios who were costing them money for very little in return. Even if the AI is not as good as what the best humans are capable of, Microsoft didn't have those people anyway. Maybe the AI doesn't save them and they're screwed either way, but as long as someone is making games that people want to play, the industry will be just fine.

  • - you wake up, you read your emails. You find out your today task will be to make most of your intended customer base as well as most of the people behind you hate your guts, just so the crashing stocks slow down just a little bit. Your bosses have decided that your job today is to tell your bosse's investors and friends that they matter more to you than your prospective customers.

    I'd imagine it sucks pretty hard, but he's getting paid enough to make eating feces on camera worth his while I guess.

    • I'd imagine it sucks pretty hard, but he's getting paid enough to make eating feces on camera worth his while I guess.

      There is not a violin small enough.

  • Yeah, that's why xbox is dead and rotting and nobody gives a fuck any more

  • Well, looks like there will be a shake-up (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday November 01, 2026 @02:38AM (#66404109)

    Because what makes games good is creativity and ideas. LLMs cannot do these. And slop is by not noticeable to most people.

    The funny thing is that the AI bros deeply believe they are the future, when it is pretty clear they are not.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by DamnOregonian ( 963763 )
      Not sure how you can come to the conclusion that they're not.
      Use of LLMs as coding agents in games is near ubiquitous now.
      The separate problem of AI assets- stable diffusion generated, etc, is even remarkably still growing, in spite of the obvious quality decrease.

      I think anyone who looks around them and says, "the future isn't slop!" is willfully delusional.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      That should be "by now noticeable".

    • Because what makes games good is creativity and ideas. LLMs cannot do these. And slop is by not noticeable to most people.

      AI can in effect be very creative. Quality issues tend to be related to game assets generated by diffusion models.

      There is a sort of feedback loop of kids growing up playing games dreaming of making games later in life leading to a competitive industry with a culture that values skills. The effect of AI is to raze every aspect of this to the ground.

      Gamers are unwilling to pay for lack of human effort regardless of apparent quality. Due to AI gamers increasingly are unable to afford hardware. Wanting to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Well, the first computer game I found really attractive was Orbquest, a text game on a Unix system. No graphics at all.

        Obsessing over graphic is at right angles to the quality of the game.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dvice ( 6309704 )

      Electric stoves make cooking easy compared to open fire. That means that people who are good at cooking can make even better foods with it, but it doesn't mean that anyone can make good food with electric stoves. I think LLMs are similar. In good hands they can help creative people to make wonderful things they couldn't do before, but obviously people will also try to use them to make quick money without any effort.

      I think we just need to wait and see what will come out of this and we need some better ways

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      Why do you think only people without own ideas use LLM?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jythie ( 914043 )

        I think that is the problem. The people who are really into AI generated games are the same 'idea people' who used to start kickstartres with 'I have a revolutionary idea for a game! all I need is money for programmers and artists!'. Their lack of experience in any relevant field (other then maybe playing games) mean their ideas are generally terrible.. and now they have tools that will not only do all the work, but tell them how brilliant they are.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by allo ( 1728082 )

          This is still no problem. People complaining about other people having tools to create usually have a filtering problem.
          Now everyone can create. Most people have no idea what they are doing and create crap. This may correlate a bit with the people who gave up before publishing before and don't now, but generally the volume of crap and good content grows and good content always was the minority.

          When we now lack tools to filter for good content (and we kind do, look at e-mail or SEO spam), you feel drowning i

  • People selling copilot will sell copilot (Score:3)

    by BitterEpic ( 10503015 ) on Sunday November 01, 2026 @02:51AM (#66404123) Homepage
    People selling copilot will sell copilot. What is the point of this article? We already know Microsoft is burning down the house for AI.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      *You* may know that, but that doesn't make it true. It *may* be true. At this stage I expect most attempts to use AI to fail. The same thing happened when computers came out. And again when personal computers came out.

      Power new tools have a learning curve. AI is definitely a powerful new tool, but it's currently changing so rapidly that we haven't really started learning how it should not be used.

  • So what would happen if a few developers with GPLed code out there, say, reported the Epic Games store (I think they have one of their own?) as a pirate website in a country which prosecutes making money from copyright infringement based on reasonable belief that their code is being pirated, taking their "AI" statements as evidence on the basis that the output of any algorithm with huge amounts of GPLed code as input must also be distributed under the GPL?

  • Since the alternative is going to StackOverflow to be bullied. Right or wrong, at least AI is nice. Although maybe StackOverflow would be nicer if people had paid them what they are paying AI.

  • Clearly a great deal of money has been spent placing these "no such thing as slop" stories, and there's no way it's going to do anybody outside of the press agent community any favours at all. Gamers want gaming to feel more like making music than simply listening to it. LIke it or not, that's the nature of the medium, and if you don't get it you don't get it. So try telling a string quartet that it's time for them to start playing from AI generated scores and like it, see how that goes.

  • There is certainly a middle ground... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Sunday November 01, 2026 @07:52AM (#66404347)
    ... between "banning all use of AI in games development" and "making the clankers churn out slop as fast as possible". There is really no rational argument against using AI as a tool as long as it is used in an interactive way where the creative input still comes from humans. But of course there is the temptation to get rid of the expensive human part in this and just automate the entire creation, and this is when you are certain to produce slop that is not worth spending your time on.

  • I wrote a game mod using Claude Code to give the NPCs in a game a realistic chatbot voice plus game context and memory. Scripting is out, AI is in.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kwerle ( 39371 )

      I wrote a game mod using Claude Code...

      I think we need new expressions. You didn't write it, did you? I know I don't write code. I used to. But I sure make a lot of code happen.

      What do we call that? I guess "I vibe coded a game mod"... A few months ago that meant something else. Mostly that something got shat out. Now.. not so much. Now it tends to be pretty good quality.

      OK. I'm just blathering.

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