A company tried making a video game using only AI. It failed. 

An experimental video game made solely by AI fell short because it was “unable to replace talent”.

The debate surrounding artificial intelligence has been going on for a while but it was only last year that a major creative industry was affected by it. The Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes put Hollywood on a standstill for almost five months, with one of the major concerns being safeguards against AI replacing human talent. 

Keywords Studio recently revealed that last year, they actually tried to make a game solely using AI to see if it was possible. They spent a considerable amount of time trying to make it happen but ultimately, it didn’t pan out for one simple reason: human talent can’t be replaced.

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Keywords Studios attempted a video game made solely by AI

In their recently published fiscal report, Keywords Studios CEO Bertrand Bodson explained that the company’s research and development sponsored an undertaking they called Project Ava. A team was given a simple task: to create a 2D game using only generative artificial intelligence or GenAI. 

The report revealed that the team spent six months and identified over 400 tools that they used while developing the experimental game. Bodson said that in some cases, Gen AI was able to speed up the developmental process though it also lagged in some areas. However, there was one major caveat that stopped them from completing the game: human talent. 

“We ultimately utilised bench resource from seven different game development studios as part of the project, as the tooling was unable to replace talent,” Bodson said. “One of the key learnings was that whilst Gen AI may simplify or accelerate certain processes, the best results and quality needed can only be achieved by experts in their field utilising Gen AI as a new, powerful tool in their creative process.” In other words, Gen AI can be useful but only when being used by someone (i.e. a human) with expertise in that creative area. 

Because the game was an experiment, Bodson said it wouldn’t be released to the public. He did say that the experiment was a success since it “spread tangible learnings” within the company. Though it’s clear that AI by itself cannot be used to create a game (yet), Keywords Studio plans to leverage it in different ways like helping in customer support. 

The AI debate in the creative sphere will continue to rage on but this experiment has proven that human talent is irreplaceable—at least, for now.