Ion Hazzikostas Isn't Worried AI Will Take Over World of Warcraft Content Planning Anytime Soon

mmorpg.com:

If  the World of Warcraft team ever feels like they’re running out of ideas,maybe they’ll let AI determine the next expansion. Or not.

In an interview with IGN on the Embers of Neltharion launch, Ion Hazzikostas (who we also chatted with on the update) mentions that he got access to ChatGPT not long ago. When testing out prompts for the AI chatbot, one of the things he asked was what the next WoW expansion should be.

“I kid you not, the number one prompt it returned to me…was ‘Return to the Shadowlands.’ So I feel like I have pretty good job security, not too worried about ChatGPT replacing me anytime soon.”

Cue the groans at that suggestion. however, there’s some speculation that one of the reasons it would come back with a focus on Shadowlands is that the tech is trained on data created prior to 2021.  " It has limited knowledge of world and events after 2021 and may also occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content."

Hazzikostas did say that the World of Warcraft team has used AI assistance before, but mostly in the art department to do some work that otherwise freed up some of the art team from grunt work. This means things like scaling and sizing gear pieces to fit the physical characteristics of different races. This has been something they’ve been using for years to assist in those processes.

While the potential for AI to do other, more iterative work, isn’t happening here, there is still a lot of greater conversations to be had as more teams begin to use more AI help. Though we won’t need to worry about an AI-driven attempt at redeeming Shadowlands anytime soon, these more intricate, but time-consuming tasks are probably going to see more help from new tech.

Now that Dragonflight continues