Embrace Group would like gamers to remember that it’s still pretty villainous. The company’s annual report for 2024 is out, and among its colorfully illustrated selection of reports, plans, and happy messages to its investors is a section that affirms the company’s eager leap aboard the AI gamedev tool bandwagon.
According to statements from Tomas Hedman, Embracer’s head of privacy and AI governance, Embracer has no choice but to use AI tools or risk being left at “a competitive disadvantage vis-Ã -vis other industry players.” That said, there is a lot of ink spilled about using AI tools as an enhancement of human labor and not a replacement.
“We do not want to replace people with AI, we want to empower them,” Hedman claims. “This is the core of our human-centric approach to leveraging the potential with AI.” He then goes on to repeat many of the same talking points that other executives in the industry have made about AI tools’ ability to make game development more efficient, how they can create new gaming experiences, and what AI model biases can develop if the AI isn’t trained correctly.
It’s at this point that we remind readers that Embracer Group’s failed $2B gamble saw that cost sliced out of the humans it purports to care about, with a lengthy restructuring process and thousands of cut jobs, all with an expressly stated intent to service the humans who hold company stock shares. So grains of salt and all that regarding caring for humans when pushing AI dev tools.
