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Despite the appearance of an ‘AI Generated Content Disclosure’ on the Arc Raiders page for Steam, design director, Virgil Watkins, has promised fans the game “in no way uses generative AI whatsoever”. Watkins explained to PCGamesN that Embark “use something called machine learning, or reinforcement learning, and that’s to do with the locomotion for our larger drones with multiple legs, but there’s no generative content whatsoever”.
While on the topic of generative AI, Watkins confirmed that Arc Raiders uses the same text-to-speech system used for The Finals. The design director said, “[it’s] the same as The Finals, we use that text-to-speech model [and] we hire and contract voice actors for it – it’s part of their contract that we use it [AI] for this purpose, and that allows us to do things like our ping system, where it’s capable of saying every single item name, every single location name, and compass directions”.
Steam’s AI disclosure contains the following message from Embark: “During the development process, we may use procedural and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team”.
Embark CEO Admits AI Used During Arc Raiders’ Development
Although Watkins assures fans there’s “no generative content whatsoever,” PCGamesN pointed out that Embark CEO, Patrick Soderlund, recently confirmed AI was used during Arc Raiders’ development in an interview with The Game Business.
Soderlund said, “If you ask for [development that’s] 100 times faster, you have to take what you know and basically throw that away and then start really thinking about what type of modifications and transformation do we need to go through in order to completely change the way that we approach this”. The Embark CEO elaborated, “So that’s when we came into procedurally generated content, to using AI and machine learning to some extent in even the content creation pipelines, to what types of tools we build, and realizing that a lot of these tools that we’ve been working with for so long stem from software that’s 25 to 30 years old.”
The discussion of AI development in games continues to grow and become more divisive. Former God of War dev has said that AI is a tool that developers should embrace, with Dead Space creator, Glen Schofield, arguing the broken video games industry needs generative AI. On the flipside, Take-Two Interactive’s CEO, Strauss Zelnick, has pushed back saying AI is “going to be really, really bad at making video games” and in no way could create something like GTA 6.
Arc Raiders releases today and for the full launch Embark has nerfed flying arcs from the recent Server Slam. There’s no roadmap but Embark has teased “ambitious post-launch plans” while also claiming they internally see it as a “10-year game”.
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