While many video game studios are adopting cautious but optimistic stances towards generative artificial intelligence, Nintendo, as usual, is seen as a turning point. A thousand miles from Ubisoft and EA Games, which openly discuss their - for the moment moderate - use of AI, the Japanese giant preferred to adopt the opposite position: during a question-and-answer session with the company's shareholders held earlier this week, Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo's president, confirmed: that none of its games used AI.
Intellectual property as a slam dunk argument
Nintendo's arguments against artificial intelligence are actually quite solid, and ultimately raise recurring concerns about the place of artificial intelligence in video games. For Shuntaro Furukawa, generative AI has “problems with intellectual property rights“. A postulate that is not exactly compatible with the values advocated by the company since its arrival on the market. video game, which does not hesitate to boast “decades of know-how in creating optimal gaming experiences“.
The idea is obviously not to brush aside all the opportunities offered by the emergence of new technologies. First, because Nintendo would be the first to suffer from such technophobia, and second, because not all tools using AI and its derivatives are necessarily synonymous with sluggish creativity. “While we remain flexible to respond to technological developments, we hope to continue to offer value that is unique to us and that cannot be achieved through technology alone,“ specifies the Nintendo boss.
In reality, AI is already here
To please both parties, without ruling out changing their minds one day, Shuntaro Furukawa acknowledged that Nintendo's refractory position on AI did not actually apply than generative language models. It must be said that the company would have been wrong to castigate artificial intelligence as a whole. As with the competition, tools that use AI on a daily basis are already used in the development of its games. The difference lies in the use that is made of it. While Nintendo is not against the use of AI for practical purposes, it refuses for the moment to use it to facilitate or replace the creative work of its teams.
A disruptive position
Nintendo's position remains largely an exception on the market. Microsoft has bet big on AI, going so far as to partner with Inworld AI to create large-scale dialogue and storytelling tools. The same goes for Sony, which takes a cautious stance by explaining that algorithms will never replace human creativity, but which admits that they have already been used in its games for creative purposes, without really specifying what they are. Enough to predict a new technological and philosophical schism in the video game market.
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