Peter Molyneux speaks candidly about AI: 'We, as the industry, are pretending we're not using AI, but the reality is, it's almost impossible to code now without using AI'

Recently, I travelled to Guildford, England, to interview developer Peter Molyneux, the legendary game developer behind Populous, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White and Fable, among others.

And, as part of that interview, which covered everything from Molyneux's brand-new god game, Masters of Albion, which has just got a huge game-changing update, through the moment he conceptualized Black & White's famous titan creatures, and onto the bombshell news that a Black & White remaster could be incoming, I also asked the father of the god game genre about AI use in the video game industry.

Molyneux is a gaming industry veteran, having been active in the gaming industry for over 40 years, so naturally his take on the rise of AI in game development was of interest. This is what he said when I asked if the gaming industry should embrace AI.

Then naturally, I asked, how so?

At this point, I asked Molyneux how AI was such a big step forward for studios, as, at least from my point of view, that has often been something not clarified well over the past few years of AI discourse. What are the everyday game development examples of how AI is being such a transformative tool for game studios of all sizes? This is what Molyneux said.

It feels inevitable, for better and worse

What struck a chord with me during this interview was Molyneux's belief that, within a year, AI will be so fundamentally built into key game development middleware like Unreal Engine and Unity that it will be almost impossible to not use AI in the creation of a new game. That just rang so true to me as soon as he had said it. It felt inevitable. Very few studios have their own proprietary tools/engines, and even if they did, if AI can indeed make game development easier, why wouldn't they adopt it into their own tech? I'm neither massively pro AI nor anti-AI in game development; it's clearly how the tech is used, and to what extent, that is key, but I'm not sure ignoring it entirely solves anything.

However, I think there is a clear difference between using AI-powered development tools and middleware to help create quality games powered by real human passion and performance, and churning out a non-stop slurry of AI slop loaded with AI assets and poorly implemented AI-coded systems in order to make a quick buck. We're clearly living through very turbulent times in the gaming industry right now, and the rise of AI in game development is just one facet of that, but it feels like there's plenty of change yet to come, and that will likely be both for the better and worse.