Xbox chief Asha Sharma has alluded to harnessing the facility of generative AI when making video games, in a memo printed this afternoon.
The memo, titled 25 years of Xbox, charts the expansion of Microsoft from small beginnings by means of to the thousands-strong firm it’s as we speak. But it surely’s Sharma’s feedback on the finish of the memo which might be of explicit curiosity.
Whereas speaking about what the subsequent 25 years may deliver, Sharma lamented that “too many concepts by no means turn into video games” and that “too many video games fall wanting what their creators imagined”. “For many years, this has been the unavoidable tradeoff of ambition,” she wrote. “We should change this.”
Sharma continued: “All through human historical past, the size of what we may create was decided by the folks, capital, and assets we may command. That relationship is starting to interrupt. A single particular person will quickly have the ability to wield capabilities that after required total nations. A small staff will have the ability to construct worlds that as we speak demand lots of of builders and lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. And our largest studios will have the ability to pursue ambitions as far past as we speak’s video games as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is from its first entry in 1982.”
There isn’t a express point out of generative AI right here, however the language is suggestive – “a single particular person will quickly have the ability to wield capabilities that after required total nations”. Moreover, Asha’s memo follows final month’s announcement of an Xbox Labs initiative that additionally sounded prefer it was primarily based round generative AI, regardless of avoiding the phrase particularly.
This is no surprise, in fact. Microsoft as a wider firm is all-in on generative AI, with Copilot, and Sharma’s background at Microsoft is in AI. But it surely’s an space she’s prevented talking too enthusiastically about since her hiring as Xbox boss earlier this yr. On the time, Sharma mentioned she has “no tolerance for unhealthy AI”, and there is been so much else occurring within the months since – together with wide-ranging restructuring ensuing within the lack of 1000’s of Xbox jobs – that the subject of generative AI has fallen into the background. Maybe now we’re seeing the sprouting seeds of it.
We have requested Microsoft for clarification.