AI Is Already Taking Jobs in the Video Game Industry

WHEN NOAH SAW the email, a wave of anxiety hit. It was spring 2023, and the Activision artist was reading a message from the company's then chief technology officer, Michael Vance, about how artificial intelligence was “top of mind” at the video game publisher. Systems were still being tested, Vance wrote, but “what we have seen thus far holds a ton of promise.”

There had been a couple emails like this sent to the employees of the studio, which produces the juggernaut Call of Duty series. A previous one had approved the internal use of generative AI tools Midjourney and Stable Diffusion for producing concept art.

That spring, backchannel chats lit up with rumors, worry, and whisper networks of whose jobs AI might replace. Where executives saw reason for excitement, many game artists, writers, and designers saw a direct threat to their livelihoods. Noah was grief-stricken. (Noah is a pseudonym; the employee has been granted anonymity because he fears retribution.)