Microsoft CEO shares hugely divisive decision on the future of Xbox games

Microsoft's CEO has revealed a hugely divisive decision on the future of Xbox games and that's because it involves generative artificial intelligence (AI).

AI has long been used in video games but its recent advances, particularly in terms of generative AI, have split the industry.

That's because while it can cut time and money spent on game development by automating certain aspects, it could eventually cut a lot of creative jobs and, generally, there's a lack of originality from AI generated content as it uses existing content to create new output.

Microsoft recently announced Muse, a generative AI model that can male "game visuals, controller actions or both".

And speaking on the Dwarkesh Podcast, its CEO Satya Nadella said the company is planning to have a number of upcoming games use it.

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"It's just very cool," he said. "One thing that we wanted to go after was, using gameplay data, can you actually generate games that are both consistent and then have the ability to generate the diversity of what that game represents and then are persistent to user mods? So, that's what this is.

"We're going to have a catalogue of games soon that will start using these models, or we're going to train these models to generate and then start playing them.

"In fact, Phil Spencer (Xbox's CEO) first showed it to me where he had an Xbox controller and this model basically took the input and generated the output based on the input and it was consistent with the game.

"And that to me is a massive, massive moment of 'wow'. It's kind of like the first time we saw ChatGPT complete sentences or Dolly draw or Sora, this is one such moment."

Microsoft's CEO has said Xbox games will have content that's already proving very divisive / CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images

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