How Will AI Impact Gaming? It’s Already Started
Right now, the biggest story in the tech industry is clearly artificial intelligence. Ever since the roll-out of ChatGPT in November 2022, there has been a wave of enthusiasm – and a touch of dystopian doomsaying – over what AI will bring to the table. The current focus is heavily leaning towards the text-to-text generative AI model, as exemplified by ChatGPT. Ask a question – any question – and you will get a specific answer, which serves to highlight the difference between a text-to-text AI and a search engine. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why may believe AI will soon replace Google Search. Google provides links to websites where you might find the answer you are looking for; AI gives you the answer.
However, text-to-text AI is not the only AI that has had success recently, and search engines certainly aren’t the only tools that will be disrupted. Look how the art world is coming to terms with DALLE-2 and MidJourney, both of which are text-to-image AI generators that can create artworks based on text prompts. There are even text-to-audio AI generators that can create music or mimic voices. All of these tools will combine to change many industries, including gaming.
Gamers will soon be using AI every day
Already, we have seen big gaming platforms start to incorporate AI into gaming. Roblox, for example, has introduced AI tools to help players (the game/platform is hugely popular with kids) easily build on the platform. Minecraft, too, has showcased a suite of AI tools, although it’s not quite clear when they will release them to the general Minecraft-playing public.
But what about AI for actually playing games? This is where it will get interesting in our view. You could easily see players of strategy games incorporating AI to help them play better. Consider games like blackjack online. Strategies like card counting for blackjack aren’t actually that complicated for we humans, although some are more skilled than others. But an AI providing a real-time feedback on those blackjack hands could give players a huge advantage. Other strategy games like chess could also be integrated with AI strategies.
We may soon design our own games
And yet, perhaps the biggest changes we will see if with creating games. ChatGPT and similar AIs are very good at coding, and they will get better as time goes on. As hinted with the examples of Minecraft and Roblox above, it is suddenly going to get very easy to design computer game worlds. At present, most gaming companies will use AI – or intend to use it – for low-level coding, the kind of repetitive tasks that don’t require much human input. But the text-to-text model, or text-to-code if we are being pedantic, could soon become much more sophisticated.
That, perhaps, is the rub: It suggests that the next evolution of video games is created by players. Picture a future – not too far away from now – where you can design your own premium video game based on text inputs. Simply write what you want to see created, and then watch as the AI does the rest. It’s really not that far-fetched, and it’s really not that far away, either. Indeed, we can see that this is not just a possibility, but a certainty.
It’s clear that AI is going to be a massive game-changer, if you’ll excuse the pun. Moreover, we have only lightly touched on some of the possibilities here. ChatGPT is only a few months old, and it already has well over 100 million users. That makes it one of the fastest-ever adopted technologies. Many believe that the impact is going to be even more transformative than the internet, and gaming will be one of the industries most disrupted by this incredible new technology.
