Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser: 'AI is not as useful as some companies would have you believe'

While EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft all tout artificial intelligence, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has a more down-to-earth assessment of the new technology.

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AI is all the rage right now. We've seen major video game companies invest billions into artificial intelligence in the hopes of streamlining content production and eliminating wasteful spending. Almost every video games company in existence has laid off workers while simultaneously embracing AI, some in the tune of thousands of job eliminations. But one pretty high-ranking games industry creative isn't convinced that AI will be the savior of the games industry that it's hyped up to be.

Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser was recently on Channel 4's Sunday Brunch show, and he had some interesting things to say about what AI can and can't do.

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In the interview, Houser confirms that he's using AI to develop new content for Absurd Ventures...but the technology is far from a magic wand.

"In the story, there's lots of AI characters. We are dabbling in using AI, but the truth is a lot of it is not as useful as some of the companies would have you believe yet. It's not going to solve all of the problems."

"We have a whole field of areas we need technology for, and AI's great at some of the tasks and can't do the other tasks yet.

"So there are claims it can solve every single problem, and it really can't yet. As far as I understand it, it's a sort of hold-all term for all future computing, and it's not really doing a lot of the stuff yet. But if we all give it all of our money, it might [be able to do it] in the future."

As for AI impacting the human creation side of games development and production, Houser says that he still believes in humans making narrative sagas:

"[Like] with all things, [gaming] can either go somewhere really interesting or somewhere that gets overly focused on making money,

"There's always that danger with any commercial artform that money causes distractions. But I think there's still a big ceiling creatively to make these kinds of living narrative experiences. I think that's what we were always trying to do."