EA staff are struggling with management urging them to use AI for ‘just about everything’, report claims
Sources claim EA’s use of AI tools is creating “flawed code” and could be leading to layoffs
Electronic Arts staff are finding it a challenge to carry out management’s demands that they use AI for “just about everything” the company does, a new report claims.
Business Insider spoke to a number of current EA staff, speaking under anonymity, who say the company’s leadership has spent the past year urging its roughly 15,000 employees to use AI for a wide range of tasks, from making code and concept art to advising managers how to speak to staff about sensitive subjects like pay or promotions.
According to the report, some staff say the AI tools they’re encouraged to use produce “flawed code” that has to be manually corrected.
Others on creative teams worry that because they’re expected to train AI software by feeding it their own work, the demand for character artists and level designers will drastically fall.
One former Respawn employee who worked in a senior AQ role says he believes one of the reasons he was among 100 colleagues laid off this past spring is because AI was reviewing and summarising feedback from play testers, a job he usually did.
Business Insider also received internal documents that show that some EA employees are expected to complete AI training courses, use AI tools daily to speed up their work rate, and treat generative AI like “a thought partner”, asking it for advice on things like how to phrase questions when a promotion is denied.
As the article notes, EA stated in May – as part of its annual 10-K Securities and Exchange Commission filing – that while it was making more use of AI tools, it had to acknowledge the dangers of these tools being used incorrectly.
“We are integrating artificial intelligence tools and technologies into our business and development processes,” EA’s filing read. “The use of artificial intelligence might present social and ethical issues that, if not managed appropriately, may result in legal and reputational harm, cause consumers to lose confidence in our business and brands and negatively impact our financial and operating results.”
According to this year’s Game Developers Conference survey, a majority (52%) of developers reported working at companies that utilize generative AI tools.
A July analysis by Totally Human found that the number of Steam games disclosing the use of generative AI has been increasing, with around 20% of all games released in 2025 to that point disclosing the use of AI on Steam. Given that this disclosure is voluntary, it’s also likely the actual number is higher.
Steam currently doesn’t make it possible to filter its games so that only those without AI-generated content can be viewed, but SteamDB has now added this filter.
