The new head of Xbox has aimed to squash fears that her arrival could spearhead a rise in the use of generative AI among its games, offering a promise to "not chase short-term efficiency". Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma, who steps into the role following the departure of longtime boss Phil Spencer, comes directly from the company's CoreAI team, leading to immediate concerns that her appointment signals the future direction of games developed and published by Xbox.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: New Xbox boss Asha Sharma promises not to flood its games with "soulless AI slop"

Jake Solomon's decision to move from making some of the best strategy games ever to an ambitious life sim was a perplexing but exciting one. Spinning up a new studio, Midsummer, he pitched it as "a life sim that really tries to elevate the choices the player makes in their life" when he spoke to us back in 2024. Inspired by The Sims, this would open up an even wider narrative sandbox than Maxis' iconic series. However, the former XCOM and Civilization developer has confirmed that Midsummer is closing its doors, and that the new game (titled Burbank) will never see the light of day. As a parting gift, he's shared a first look at what the game could've been, and the biggest surprise is that its narrative and dialog is AI-powered.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: XCOM veteran Jake Solomon's AI-powered, narrative-driven Sims rival bites the dust

There are a handful of studios out there that, if they revealed they were using generative AI in their games, I'd be particularly heartbroken about. Bethesda is absolutely one of them - hand-crafted, detailed worlds and quests full of memorable moments and flair are the core pillars that helped it make some of the best RPGs of all time. Even the procedural generation used in many of Starfield's vast planets muddied the waters a bit, so injecting AI-generated content into its games could be even more damaging and disappointing. Todd Howard has previously gone on record to say that AI is not generating anything inside the studio, and in a new interview with Kinda Funny, he reaffirms that. However, he appears open to adopting AI tools that can help Bethesda tackle "big data tasks" so that developers can "move on to the creative stuff."

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Todd Howard says Bethesda is being "incredibly cautious" around AI, but sounds keen to use it for "big data tasks"

Godot developer Rémi Verschelde says a rise in AI-generated code is weighing down on the resources of its dedicated maintenance team. The open-source game engine has been around since 2014, but has gained increasing relevancy in recent years as an alternative to the likes of Unity, with Mega Crit switching to Godot for the development of Slay the Spire 2 as just one example. That growing popularity has been reflected in increasing submissions from budding contributors, but Verschelde cautions that an abundance of "AI slop" code is becoming overwhelming.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: A recent rise in "AI slop" code submissions is "draining and demoralizing" the team behind open-source game engine Godot

In many of the biggest, most popular games and series, we're starting to see AI-generated or AI-assisted assets slowly creep in. Call of Duty's calling cards, for example, or Arc Raiders' text-to-speech system for generating dialog. While there's always some level of pushback and disgruntlement, there's a growing amount of acceptance or indifference to it as well. It seems that the EA Sports FC series has jumped on the wagon too, with iconic soccer commentator and FC 26 star Guy Mowbray giving EA permissions to use an AI version of his voice to generate new lines of commentary.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: One of FC 26's commentators confirms that EA uses an AI replicating his voice to record new lines