What do you think about AI's role in game development?

Do you think AI will be a major component in the development of games in the game industry, with the rise of AI tools like Stable Diffusion, Github Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, MusicLM, and other AI / LLM tools and software?

For example, you can ask AI to implement a feature and it can spit out very accurate results.

Spoiler: Asking AI to create a function for Axis-Aligned Bounding Box

You could even get AI to generate images for you.

Spoiler: Asking AI to create an image

With the optimal parameters, AI can shave off a lot of development time, but is it lazy (and possibly negative to actual creators) or do you see it as actually being beneficial?

 

Kind of worth discussing seeing that many people in the gaming community recently suggest that PocketPal may have used AI in the development of Palworld, but this speculation is unverified.

The Palworld AI allegation arises because of similarities in Pokemon models to Pal models, what I would describe as an amalgamon (Pokemon fusion, or an amalgamation of various Pokemon features).

Take for instance Azurobe:


It has roughly the body type of the Pokemon Serperior, hair style of the Pokemon Primarina, and tail of the Pokemon Ampharos (though the tail similarity might be a little be of a stretch). There are numerous other pals that capture the perception of Pokemon and yet, as a whole, are distinct.

What the AI allegation suggests is that Pocketpair could have used training data of 3D Pokemon models to generate amalgamon using various features of Pokemon. Of course, it's also plausible that they ripped off actual Pokemon models, reshaped and resized parts, and spliced the parts in. And lastly, it's plausible that the artists were deeply keen and inspired by Pokemon but did incorporate their own ideas. What do you think?

Also, where would you draw the line between copyright law and AI-generated content?