Epic CEO Tim Sweeney Is Not a Fan of AI Tags in Video Games; Explains Why

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney shared a rather controversial opinion on Wednesday. He opined that artificial intelligence (AI) labels are pointless when listing a video game on a marketplace, since in the future more developers will tend to use the technology in different production processes. The opinion comes at a time when the gaming industry is divided on the usage of AI, with some refusing to use the technology in the games while others finding benefits in AI-generated art, 3D models, and animations.

AI Labels in Games Not Necessary, Says Tim Sweeney

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Sweeney said, “It makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production.” He also underscored that an AI tag is more relevant when it comes to art exhibits for authorship disclosure, and digital content licensing marketplaces where the buyer needs to understand the rights.

The comment came in response to another user's post who highlighted that Steam and some other digital marketplaces have started using the “Made with AI” label to games. These labels act as a type of disclosure to let the user know that digital artworks or enhancements have been made using generative AI technology.

Since the gaming industry is split on the opinion, many would find Sweeney's comments about AI becoming the norm in the future, controversial. Recently, the director of the popular gaming title Witcher 3, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, told Eurogamer, “I think that AI should help people and AI shouldn't replace them. It needs to evolve to the place where it will be the tool which helps us[..]not something which steals the author rights and creates the graphics or the animations because it learns from the creations of people[..]I don't feel that games created with only AI will have soul.”

The sentiment against AI usage in gaming is even more prominent when it comes to tell-tale and roleplaying games (RPGs) that are majorly text-based, which means low-effort games can be developed quickly and flood the marketplaces. According to a post, Steam has more than one thousand games that use generative AI in some capacity.

However, on the other end of the spectrum are games like Arc Raiders, which used AI-generated text-to-speech voices, which were trained on real actors. The rest of the game was developed using human developers and automation tools that have been a part of the industry for years.