It looks like Nintendo won’t be using generative AI in its first-party titles anytime soon, so we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.
During the company annual meeting of shareholdersNintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa was asked about the company’s potential to use AI in game development in the future. Given that almost every industry, including game development, has jumped on the AI bandwagon, Furukawa’s response was surprising: Nintendo will continue to create games that “can’t be done by technology alone.” He also noted that generative AI has been a “hot topic” and that while it could be “more creative,” Nintendo acknowledged that it involves a series of intellectual property issues, something the company seems keen to avoid.
Here’s the full summary of what Furukawa said about Nintendo’s use of generative AI (translated via Nintendo Life):
“In the gaming industry, AI-type technology has long been used to control the movements of enemy characters. Game development and AI technology have therefore always been closely linked. Generative AI, which has attracted a lot of attention in recent years, may be more creative, but we also recognize that it raises intellectual property rights issues.”
“We have decades of experience creating optimal gaming experiences for our customers. While remaining flexible in the face of technological developments, we hope to continue to deliver value that is uniquely ours and cannot be achieved through technology alone.”
Although Furukawa didn’t say Nintendo in so many words would not While the gaming giant has said it will use generative AI in its games in the future, its response seems to indicate that it’s pretty content working with what it has for now. AI has clearly been around the gaming industry: we’ve seen Ubisoft’s neo-NPC project (with mixed results, including a female NPC that got too excited to the point of needing reprogramming), PlayStation executives touting AI as the next frontier for creating personalized experiences for the next generation, and Microsoft’s Inworld AI partnership in recent years.
For now at least, Nintendo isn’t planning on venturing into AI waters for its own titles. With the Switch 2 on the horizon, we might be spared the AI missteps of first-party developers when the new handheld finally releases – though precedent suggests that we’ll unfortunately still be subjected to AI changes from some third-party developers on the eShop.
Image: Nintendo / Kotaku Australia