The AI-powered Darth Vader probably wasn't on the Fortnite Player's 2025 bingo card, but the gamers were in a hurry to chat with the characters in the game. Rather than saying pre-programmed lines, chatbots were able to tell jokes when they encouraged players' achievements.
This feature was a temporary experiment, but it showed that AI is more than a side quest in the gaming industry.
Artificial intelligence has long been part of video game development. Therefore, recent advances in machine learning and generation AI have made studios use technology to speed up production and make gameplay more immersive.
The Game Developer Conference's 2025 State of the Game Industry Report found that 52% of developers surveyed work in companies using generator AI tools. At large video game companies like Ubisoft, Machine Learning focuses on accelerated development, automated tedious tasks, and free game elements and characters for developers and artists. These companies are experimenting with new game features, including non-player characters that use Genai to improve in-game conversations with players.
Meanwhile, many indie developers and independent studios lead the price of AI-Native games built around Tech, like a massive language model that is redefineing the development process. As the studio is looking at the financial costs of this new technology significantly, it also navigates how to use AI in a fair and enjoyable way for both game makers and players.
Yves Jacquier is executive director of La Forge, Ubisoft's research and development lab. Provided by Ubisoft
AI can streamline game production
At Ubisoft, machine learning is already working behind the scenes to speed up the creation process. In the action-adventure game “Assassin's Creed Shadows,” Faceshifter, a 3D creation tool, helped artists create and model the heads of their secondary characters.
This tool uses a unique dataset of 3D scanned heads to design new models with different characteristics. Yves Jacquier, executive director of Ubisoft's research and development lab La Forge, said high-resolution heads can usually take a week, but Faceshifter can quickly give artists a foundation for repetition and free up time to focus on more important characters.
“With this technology, there are some tweaks that can be believed within half a day,” says Jacquier.
Generated AI also helped automate complex tasks for developers of mobile gaming company King by increasing production speeds, improving live operations, or improving continuous in-game updates. Luka Crnkovic-Friis, head of AI and machine learning, told Business Insider that AI will serve as the “co-pilot” for King's game maker.
“It helps you write and review your code faster, run playtests on scale, and adjust mechanics at tens of thousands of levels,” Crnkovic-Friis said in an email to Business Insider.
King's popular puzzle game “Candy Crush Saga” is “Candy Crush Saga” with over 19,000 levels, and Crnkovic-Friis said his team is using AI tools such as Openai's Codex CLI and Anthropic's Claude code to test levels, make design adjustments and improve the game.
At Jam and Tea Studios, AI is an even more influential collaborator in the development process. The early stage studio developed “Retail Mage,” an AI-native employment simulation game, to create a more dynamic interaction between NPCs and the gaming environment. This means that much of the development process is in English rather than coding language, which has allowed more team members to access production and contributed to faster creation.
“As soon as that technology was generated quickly and quickly in the game, we were able to generate dialogue and experiences, our iterative process surged. “We built a retail magician in about five months, which is insanely fast.”
In “Retail Mage”, players can talk to NPCs and help Magemart's Magic Store customers by modifying objects in the game to fulfill requests. Courtesy of Jam & Tea Studios
AI-driven gameplay is experimental and expensive
While many studios are already using machine learning and Genai to improve their development processes, the industry is still experimenting with how technology can reshape the player's experience.
Ubisoft uses AI to create smarter programming for NPCs and create medium in-game chats. However, more dynamic gameplay features, such as the Neo NPC project, which uses LLM for spontaneous dialogue, are still in the prototype phase.
Jacquier said that such gameplay features are more experimental. This is because, for example, we want to prevent LLM from hallucinating. He said it's important that not only “very expensive gadgets” that no one cares about, but that the technology is fun and purposeful.
The cost of this experimental technique was a challenge for Jam and Tea Studios when building “retail magicians.” Software and hardware, including cloud technology and graphics processing units, can be price tagged as needed to run generic AI models. Far said this is partly why there are still not many AI native games on the market.
“We hardly did 'retail magicians' because we thought it was too expensive,” Far said. “It's not that we couldn't build it. It must have been too expensive to run.”
Aaron Farr is co-founder and CTO of Jam & Tea Studios. Courtesy of Lutisha Aubrey Photography
Using AI responsibly is a continuous conversation
As AI changes the way game makers and creatives work, the studio is also navigating ways to use technology with caution and responsibility.
For Jacquier, this means examining the entire development process when adding new technologies. This big approach helps his team find new ways to continue working with creative talent like video game actors.
“You shouldn't think about technology, you have to think about your entire ecosystem,” Jacquier said. “This is the only way to make sure you stay sustainable, at least from a creative perspective.”
While industry best practices are still emerging, Crnkovic-Friis said using approved sources, maintaining transparency and maintaining the people involved is one of his guidelines.
“Responsible adoption means moving skills, safeguards and inclusion faster, just as we do functions,” he told Business Insider.
Far said AI has the power to encourage more creativity and build games that are more relevant to the player than ever before. But to do that ethically, he added, the industry needs to have ongoing dialogue about the role of technology.
“We want to build a future we want to live in,” Farr said. “The initial risk isn't involved in the conversation. If you're concerned about the future, you need to build it as both a creative and a technist.”
