As generative AI continues to rear its ugly digital head into everything, Dragon Age narrative lead David Gaider has dubbed the technology a “virulent plague”.
GenAI has been a hot topic in the games industry as of late. Baldur’s Gate 3 dev Larian Studios was pushed by fans to denounce the technology for its work on Divinity. Games Workshop, the studio behind Warhammer 40,000, announced an internal ban on the tech to protect human artists.
In a discussion with GamesRadar, Gaider explained that Generative Ai is “trained on data regardless of whether creators or owners have agreed to have their data pillaged in this manner”. Alongside the obvious legal issues, GenAI companies like Midjourney are currently embroiled in lawsuits, the Dragon Age lead says users shouldn’t “ignore the moral implications” of the technology.
“Honestly, what does it help with?” Gaiden asked the outlet. “Does it make the work more efficient? Does it improve the work? It wouldn’t be so bad if generative AI was seen more as an assistant, doing the drudgery while leaving more important tasks for the worker, but we seem to be seeing more and more of the reverse: the AI is set to do the important work and the worker is around to ‘clean up’.”
The consensus amongst pro-AI techbros is that AI can quickly provide an outline that can be edited later. “In all my time as a narrative designer, I’ve never once encountered a situation where editing an inferior product took less time than simply throwing it out and redoing it would have resulted in anything better than mediocre.”
Additionally, the move to push out lower-level work means “eliminating every task which is useful for training juniors” which Gaider explains ruins the “next generation of devs”. Gaider also explains that “generative AI is terrible at iteration”, which is where the tool is being pushed by executives.
“I can’t even imagine using it for bigger tasks like programming,” the Dragon Age veteran said. “How does one bug fix ‘vibe coding’? What’s the point of creating prototypes with AI when the result is that nobody on the team has actually learned anything about how to make the final product? Why use AI to create concepts which are inevitably going to be soulless and contain errors and which aren’t going to be something your own artists can replicate? Why have systems that nobody on your team really knows how they work? I could go on and on.”
Even if GenAI was useful, combined with its legal issues, Gaider concludes that the technology “is not ready for prime time” at leats “until some regulation is in place”, it’s legally sound, and “the people making decisions regarding its use finally realise that it’s not the source of cheap labour replacement they want it to be”.
Gaider says that Generative AI “should be treated like the virulent plague it is”. While there are some locally-trained, therefore ethical, uses for AI-like tools, the wide expanse of generative AI is, well, as Gaider says, a plague.
In an interview with us at FRVR earlier this year, Warhammer 40,000 designer Jervis Johnson also fought back against generative AI calling it “the asbestos of the internet”. Additionally, we talked to Halo artist Eddie Smith about the technology, who explained that studios relying on the tech are in for a “rude awakening” in the future.
