Engine maker Unity has established an AI Council it claims will “accelerate the pace and quality of innovation” across the company.
The news comes around two months after Unity lauded its AI-powered advertising platform, Unity Vector, for “transforming” the company’s growth prospects following a turbulent period of widespread layoffs, leadership changes, and public grovelling in the aftermath of the company’s infamous Runtime Fee rollout.
Unity said its new council will drive product innovation by connecting leading minds in the field of AI with Unity’s internal product leaders. The first two members of the council are LiveX AI co-founder, president, and chief AI officer Jia Li; and Julian Togelius, associate professor of computer science and engineering at NYU and co-founder of modl.ai.
Unity will announced additional members in the coming months. “AI is transforming our industry and accelerating the volume and pace of game creation,” said Unity CEO and president, Matt Bromberg.
“We’re dedicated to providing the best platform in the world for the next era of interactive content creation. We’re excited to welcome Jia and Julian, and look forward to their insights.”
Sharing their views on AI in the world of game development, Unity’s council members suggested the technology will open up new frontiers.
“Advances in AI are opening up huge opportunities for game development and interactive experiences that were previously out of reach,” said Julian Togelius. “Unity is uniquely well positioned to enable these innovations.”
Jia Li appears to hold similar views. “I believe the future of AI is multimodal and interactive and we have a real opportunity to enable creators and businesses to build living, breathing worlds. Unity’s strong ecosystem across mobile, PC, console, and XR makes it the perfect platform to drive this transformation.”
Curiously, there was no mention of the concerns surrounding the technology. This year’s GDC State of the Industry survey showed that video game workers are not warming to generative AI tools, and in fact have become even more pessimistic about the technology over the past 12 months.
Game Developer has reached out to Unity for more information.
