Nearly 50% of developers say generative AI tools are being used at their workplace

Nearly 50% of developers say that generative AI tools are being used at their workplace, while 84% say they’re concerned about their use.

The latest GDC State of the Game Industry survey, which asked more than 3000 developers across indie and AAA studios about their work and the industry, asked if generative AI tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, GitHub Copilot or Adobe Generative Fill were being used at their company.

31% of respondents said they personally used such tools, while a further 18% said they didn’t but others in their workplace did.

15% said AI wasn’t being used but that there was an interest in trying it out, while 23% said there was no interest in AI at their workplace.

The use of generative AI is a significant pressure point in many creative industries, including video games, with tools such as Midjourney being criticised by some who perceive them as replacing professional artists and using their work without permission for their training set.

According to the survey, AI is being used across a variety of job types at development studios, including business and finance (which 44% of respondents said it was being used for), community and PR (41%), production and team management (33%), programming (25%), game design (21%), narrative (13%), visual arts (16%), audio (14%) and QA (6%).

The survey also notes that indie studios are more likely to use AI tools at the moment, with 37% of respondents from indie studios saying they personally used it, versus 21% working at AAA and AA studios.

Respondents were also asked how concerned they were about the ethics of using generative AI in the games industry. 42% said they were “very concerned”, while a further 42% said they were “somewhat concerned”.

Last year Xbox announced a multi-year deal with Inworld to build AI dialogue and narrative tools at scale.

The report also gives quotes from some developers who explained how they would like to see AI being used in the future, with most saying they were interested in coding assistance, speeding up content creation and automating repetitive tasks.

“Code development is one of the best places this will be helpful,” one respondent said. “Across engineering and content, developers will find ways to optimise their processes using AI. The best in the industry will do so to enhance their processes, not to fully replace anything.”

Another added: “I’d like to see AI tools that help with the current workflows and empower individual artists with their own work. What I don’t want to see is a conglomerate of artists being enveloped in an AI that just does 99% of the work a creative is supposed to do.”

Some responses were of course negative, with one respondent saying: “AI exploits the work of others without credit or payment and is a net loss to true creativity.”

51% of respondents said their workplace had some sort of policy regarding the use of AI tools, with 30% saying they’re optional, 12% saying none are allowed at all, 7% saying only select tools are allowed, and 2% saying they were mandatory.