Microsoft calls on game industry to do AI right, not get 'dazzled' by new tech

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ESA chief Stanley Pierre-Louis and Microsoft’s GM of gaming AI, Haiyan Zhang. Photo: Game File

LAS VEGAS - Microsoft’s general manager of gaming AI, Haiyan Zhang, called on the industry to constructively imagine how to apply generative AI, that buzziest of technologies, to video games.

“Let's work together and figure out what that future is for the games industry where AI can really make an impact,” Zhang said here, just before lunchtime at the DICE Summit, an annual meeting of a few hundred industry leaders.

Microsoft is deeply invested in generative AI through a partnership with Chat GPT maker OpenAI, among other initiatives. In November Microsoft announced its first big generative AI gaming partnership with Inworld, a company that has produced a tech demo that uses AI to generate new replies from computer-controlled characters as the player speaks to them. (Read my impressions of it from last August.)

Zhang did not announce any new gen AI Microsoft gaming projects during her DICE talk, but she did spitball a few possible areas of gaming where new applications of AI might help. And she urged measured, responsible deployment of the tech.

“Sometimes when these things happen we get dazzled by the technology and we focus too much on technology for technology’s sake,” she said.