Right now, one of the main points of contention in the game development space is the usage of AI to either work as an addition or replacement of certain aspects of development. The members of SAG-AFTRA are, for instance, currently on strike seeing as industry leaders and that organization cannot come to an agreement on its uses.
Amazon Games CEO Christoph Hartman was asked about the usage of AI in an interview with IGN, and insisted that because the majority of programming is a creative field, AI is not poised to replace humans. But he did say that it could replace the “boring parts” of development.
“I mean, I got to be careful what is here because we are a big company and have to deal with all those organizations, so I don’t really want to get in the middle of it. But when we talk about AI, first of all, hopefully it will help us to have new gameplay ideas, which has nothing to do with taking work away from anyone. And especially for games, we don’t really have acting… The majority of the team sits in programming and that’s not going to go away because that’s all about innovation. If it takes something, it will be really the boring parts.”
Hartman has previously been rather open to using AI in game development, particularly to speed things up, but he did not recommit to that support.
It’s currently unknown if upcoming Amazon Games projects utilize AI in any significant way.