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CEO of Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead, Shams Jorjani, has been speaking out about Arc Raiders' controversial use of AI, saying he believes it's "a very interesting use case that actually makes gaming better."
Speaking on a new episode of The Game Business Show (below), Jorjani says he finds that any talk related to AI in the games industry ends up falling into one of two extremes, where on one hand we see the likes of Square Enix proclaiming it wants to automate 70% of its QA testing and debugging, and on the other "we have developers who feel that their livelihood… the very fabric of their being is being threatened, and therefore all AI is bad AI." He questions: "Maybe, could it be, that reality is somewhere in the middle? Could it be?"
He clarifies that "we need to make sure that we're not stealing people's intellectual property and rights," but overall believes that "people jump to extreme takes. My thing with Arc Raiders is I think it's a very interesting use case that actually makes gaming better."
Arc Raiders uses AI for certain voice lines – for example, player pings and callouts, allowing players to communicate sort of vocally by pointing out specific dangers and items without actually having to use voice chat, and also for some NPC voice lines.
Embark has explained that real voice actors were hired for the game in addition to the devs utilizing a form of text-to-speech to generate certain lines – arguing that this system allows for vocal pings of "every single item name, every single location name, and compass directions" and "without needing to have someone come in every time we create a new item for the game" (thanks, PCGamesN), but not everyone is thrilled.
After all, there's still an argument to be made that this has taken work away from real voice actors at a time when many are worried about AI replacing human jobs, but it's worth keeping in mind that real individuals were hired and paid for their involvement in this case.
It's the use of the technology in Arc Raiders' player comms specifically that Jorjani praises, noting that he personally doesn't "do voice in games," as "communicating directly with people I don't know is very, very scary." Therefore, he argues: "I think this allows more people to connect with each other, which is ultimately a good gaming thing. Let's just make sure that people are paid for their work. Like, surely there's a middle ground here, come on."
Jorjani continues, noting that he "would oppose this dichotomy that some say developers don't want to use AI. Anyone who is in any level of production, you're always looking at ways to create more efficiency, reduce the stuff you don't want to do so you can do more of the stuff you want to do." With that said, he clarifies, "we don't put any AI in the games, but if it can allow me to do my receipts faster, then that's more Helldivers for everyone. Not Helldivers specifically, but you get the point."
