Embark Studios doesn’t want to “open the floodgates” on AI, but the recent backlash hasn’t “changed its outlook,” either

Embark Studios is seemingly unfazed by the recent backlash about its use of AI in the development of Arc Raiders, saying it doesn’t want to “open the floodgates” on AI, but neither has the recent feedback “changed [its] outlook,” either.

In an interview with PCGN, art director Virgil Watkins said “I don’t think it’s fallen any way or the other,” saying: “As with all the tools we build or make use of, [it comes down to]: ‘Does it ultimately let us do something we couldn’t before, or is it an added [bonus] to the game?’ With the [text-to-speech] stuff, I think it was an unlock for us to be able to do voiced characters when we, at the time, did not have capacity to do so.

“And now, do we have different affordances, now that the game is what it is? Probably. And then we can ask ourselves, ‘Did the quality hit the mark?’ And maybe not. So should we revise how or why we do that? But I don’t think it’s been like, ‘Oh, well, let’s open the floodgates for all types of AI or even AI-adjacent tools.’ So no, I don’t think it’s changed our outlook on that.”

The key, Watkins said, was to “[build] what we can, the best we can.”

“And a lot of it is just that avenue of exploring emerging tech and building our own tools for things, because that’s what enabled us to build a lot of this with the team the size we have,” he added.

“So I think it’ll be more of that in the future, and just trying to see what we can do for ourselves to, like, keep building content at the scale we have. But, obviously, we’re not deaf to the concerns that are out there for it.”

Last week, the CEO and founder of Swedish developer Embark Studios, Patrick Söderlund, said the company was not using AI to reduce its investment in people. The executive insisted that games is a “people industry” amid criticism for the firm’s use of artificial intelligence within its suite of releases, most recently the highly popular extraction shooter, Arc Raiders.

Arc Raiders recently hit 12 million copies sold as it topped 3.2 million DAUs.