Microsoft has announced that it has teamed up with AI company Inworld AI for a multi-year partnership to use its tools to develop Xbox Games.
Inworld AI will supposedly help with building game dialogue and narrative tools at scale in order to build out story and quest design. Not only will this partnership be utilized within Xbox game studios, but also third-party studios for new games.
Inworld AI CEO Ilya Gelfenbeyn mentioned that the use of AI could reduce the time and resource restraints during production, thus allowing games to ship faster. The company’s design copilot would take input ideas and turn into the detailed scripts, dialogue trees, quests, and more.
Microsoft has been championing the use of AI this past year. Back in February, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said that Xbox developers are exploring how AI can be an “additive, positive force” in development. Corporate vice president Sarah Bond said that the use of AI would democratize game development. Microsoft has also welcomed for the regulation of AI, and Inworld has also worked with other gaming companies such as NetEase, Unity, Unreal, and more.
Neither Microsoft nor Inworld AI have spoken about how this partnership and the use of AI will impact the game developers themselves, including whether or not they could potentially lose their jobs because of it. 2023 has been a particularly brutal year for game developers as big studios such as Bungie, Niantic, Electronic Arts, and Epic Games have laid off workers. At the beginning of the year, Microsoft also cut its own workforce by 10,000 people, including those in the Xbox division.
