According to a research sponsored by Google Cloud, nearly 90% of computer game developers use artificial intelligence agents to automate tasks, automating tasks at the point of record layoffs and fierce competition in the industry.
AI was used to automate repetitive, tedious tasks rather than generating content, said 87% of game developers who said they were using AI.
The study, conducted by Harris' polls, surveyed 615 game developers from the US, South Korea, Norway, Finland and Sweden between late June and early July.
Return on investment
Approximately 44% of developers said they used AI agents to optimize their content and quickly processed information such as text, audio, code, audio, video and more.
Agents were able to exercise autonomy and make decisions, a study that is an example of the increasingly popular use of AI.
Around 94 respondents said they hope that AI will reduce overall development costs over the long term, but a quarter of those acknowledged that it is difficult to measure the return on investment for AI investments.
The costs associated with technology integration are also high, the study said.
And of the many legal challenges regarding the use of copyrighted content to train AI systems, around 63% expressed concern about data ownership.
The use of AI in game development comes when studios are laid off thousands of developers despite the pressure to offer prominent titles.
Using AI to create gaming content is highly controversial, and Hollywood video game performers have faced issues with AI and payments last year.
Video game studios have fired thousands of staff, including the gaming business, as more than 10,000 staff were fired last year, and Microsoft alone has invested billions of dollars in AI infrastructure.
The company's aggressive promotion of AI attracted negative attention in July when Xbox producers suggested people who used people laid to help them deal with the emotional and practical effects of their situation.
AI Agent
The agent is being touted as the next frontier for AI, but a June Gartner survey found that 40% of such projects are likely to be cancelled within just two years due to rising costs and lower return on investment.
Many agent AI is driven by hype, and the majority of so-called AI agents are actually repackaging versions of existing products, such as chatbots.
Senior Director Anushree Verma said most of the current AI agent projects are early stage experiments or proof of concepts driven primarily by hype and often misused.
This could blind organizations to the real costs and complexity of deploying AI agents at scale and not completing projects, she said.
Gartner said in a poll earlier this year that 19% of organizations have invested heavily in AI agents, while another 42% have made conservative investments. Another 8% did nothing.
Almost a third, or 31% of respondents in that survey, said they were waiting to see how the technology has evolved.
