GDC survey: 40% of game industry workers now use AI

About 40% of game industry workers now use AI in their work, according to a Game Developers Conference (GDC) survey of roughly 2,600 people in the sector. The figure is up 4 percentage points from 36% in the previous survey, as reported by The Verge.

Usage is not evenly spread. AI use reached 58% among free-to-play game developers and 70% among mobile game studio workers. Among those who use the technology, 57% said they do so daily.

Research and code ahead of art

The most common tasks were research and idea generation (73%), data analysis and summarization (62%), and code generation and bug fixing (56%). Visual work was less common: 22% use AI for concept art and visual idea development, and 8% use it for finished in-game graphics.

Attitudes remain largely critical. 55% of respondents said AI has a negative impact on the game industry, 35% described the impact as mixed, and 8% called it positive.

Studios are experimenting in narrower ways. Indie developer House House said it used a large language model in a limited way to fix technical problems late in development of its game Big Walk. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said AI could allow small teams to build game worlds that currently require hundreds of staff and large budgets.

The survey also recorded job insecurity in the sector: 34% of respondents said they had been laid off in the past two years, and 54% of those were still unemployed.