AI is "the very core of our business", says EA CEO

EA CEO Andrew Wilson has stated AI is "the very core of our business" and the company has over a hundred "active novel AI projects" to assist with game development.

Yesterday, the company held its Investor Day 2024, detailing its next games and innovations: including the likes of The Sims, Star Wars Jedi and Battlefield.

Yet AI was a major part of the presentation. Speaking of generative AI, Wilson said: "This remarkable technology is not merely a buzzword for us, it's the very core of our business."

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The company has over a hundred AI projects, said Wilson, across three strategic categories.

Efficiency is not just about cost saving but "doing what we do today faster, cheaper, and at a higher quality", he said. Expansion is about "giving our creative teams an exponentially bigger canvas upon which to create" by adding depth and intelligence to characters and personalising stories. Lastly, the company will accelerate innovation and the creation of content through Transformation.

"For years we have talked about our games delivering experiences that are always new and different," said Wilson. "We predict that with generative AI we will truly be able to fulfil this promise for billions of people for billions and billions of hours."

So how are these AI projects being put into practice? Laura Miele, president of EA Entertainment and Technology, spoke at length about AI opportunities - after briefly running through forthcoming single-player games like Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the Star Wars Jedi games, as well as the likes of Apex Legends and The Sims.

At present, EA's current game-development infrastructure handles a billion AI requests daily, Miele said, while the company's AI tools power in-game features for stable game experience, personal recommendations, and create a fair and secure gaming environment.

One specific example of AI use is in The Sims for its forthcoming hub that acts as a central platform for all series games. AI is powering discovery tools so that Sims players can search for suitable in-game assets using photos rather than text.

Through photo-based searching, players can find housing elements or even upload a photo of a real human to create their likeness. While powerful, there's also potential for this sort of function to be abused.

Another example is EA's new Script to Scene tool, which essentially allows game development to be done through text or voice prompts. This includes creating characters and scenes, as well as direct performances, all using generative art, AI-enabled game development, and procedural generation.

These are clear examples of how AI is already impacting game development. Indeed, as Eurogamer reported in March, AI is already used by 62 percent of studios, according to a report by Unity. Character animation was the biggest use case.

And just yesterday, Eurogamer reported on Nvidia boss Jensen Huang who discussed the advantages of AI as a key component for advancing graphical capabilities.

Other areas of AI use are for NPCs, scriptwriting, and voice acting, which have all received criticism. For more on AI in game development, check out our feature on how AI is changing video game development forever.