This online conversation surrounding Arc Raiders’ AI voice generation was largely spurred by a review at Eurogamer, which gave the game a 2 out of 5 stars due to finding the inclusion of AI inexcusable. The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, weighed in on the discourse surrounding the review on social media, saying, “political opinions should go into op eds folks.”
Lee’s comments, and those of other high ranking people at various game companies, seem almost ubiquitous within the industry. EA, Square Enix, and more have openly embraced AI publicly and within their companies’ internal processes, as have those in other sectors like the film industry. It’s important to note however that these imbecilic comments are far from objective reality.
Every embracer of AI keeps saying the same things: AI is here. It’s happening. It’s not going away, and any dissenters must simply get over it. All they can ever do is try to persuade us that we’ve already lost, and yet despite all their money and influence, they can’t seem to quell the backlash. They have failed time and time again to convince us that the costs to human labor and the environment that AI brings is worth it.
AI is a primitive and vulgar machine in the world of human creativity, and whatever AI processes have been mandated at companies have proven to be deeply flawed. Our world is far from having reached a universal consensus, and there is still time to disenchant whatever magic AI’s proponents are attempting to cast on us. The ridiculousness of Lee’s comments almost goes without saying, but it must be addressed: no, we should not be assuming every game company is using AI, and there is no reason that they should be.
