PlayStation co-CEO spits out a bizarre prediction about the future of AI and gaming—one I pray never happens

pcgamer.com:

The concept of AI-driven game development is a largely untested, pie in the sky dream mostly supported by people who don't actually make games, including Diablo fan Elon Musk, but that hasn't stopped PlayStation co-CEO Hermen Hulst from predicting that it will become the norm.

While AI has been shown to be very good at plagiarism, there's a wild gulf between stealing voices or mangling art and actually making a functioning, competently designed game with any innovative qualities, but that won't stop 'ideas guys' or executives from pushing a future where publishers are able to cut out the creatives.

Speaking with the BBC for the PlayStation's 30th anniversary, Hulst's prediction attempts to placate both sides—the people extremely worried about AI's impact on creative industries, and the folks selling the dream of an AI future—but it sounds just as hard to swallow as the predictions from executives who've been fully AI-pilled.

«I suspect there will be a dual demand in gaming: one for AI-driven innovative experiences and another for handcrafted, thoughtful content,» he told the Beeb.

But aside from the folks who actually have an investment in AI, who's actually going to demand an AI-driven game? Even among the players who don't see AI as an existential threat to the people working in the industry, or who simply don't care, there's no tangible benefit for them. And given the current limits of AI, why would they ever pick a game created without the human touch over one created by teams that have some kind of creative intent? Aside from morbid curiosity, anyway.

There's arguably one advantage, though: specifically, in games that aren't just driven by AI at the development stage, but continue to use AI to evolve and adapt to the whims of their players. We don't even need to guess at what these games would look like, because Oasis already exists. This AI game prototype is literally just Minecraft, but a version that uses AI to adapt to your inputs, and which can do things