There seems to be no escaping AI these days. Along with the numerous posts on social media which at times have left me questioning what is real, it has also become a common feature across various platforms and devices. Even the transcription tool my friends and I use in our D&D game often delivers a summary of the session back to us, all unprompted.
Then in games, we’ve already had the likes of AI NPCs, AI scriptwriting and AI voice acting, to name just a few. AI really is everywhere. As our Alex spotted at Gamescom last month, a lot of smaller indie developers are using the technology to generate content, with AI artwork becoming a recurring theme. But, what about the bigger studios like Blizzard?
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I recently sat down with developers behind two of the company’s biggest franchises – World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 – and the subject turned to AI. While Blizzard uses the technology for the more “menial” areas of development, both teams agree that when it comes to things such as characters and stories, you just can’t beat a human touch.
“I think one of the things for World of Warcraft that makes it feel very unique, at least on the art side of things, is the handcrafted feel to it,” Gabriel Gonzalez, World of Warcraft’s lead visual development artist, tells me. “That is, and always will be, a big part of it.”