Sega claims it’s being ‘very cautious’ about AI and won’t use it for creative work

Sega says it is taking a “very cautious” approach to using AI in game development, and ruled out the technology entirely for creative work.

That’s according to the company’s senior executive officer and deputy chief business officer, Tsuyoshi Saito. Speaking in a wide-ranging interview with Nikkei, Saito claimed that, while Sega is actively using AI in some areas of its business, the company remains cautious about expanding its use.

“We are using AI to improve efficiency in areas such as publishing and corporate departments, as well as for generating business ideas,” he said. “However, we are being very cautious about its use in the game development process, and we are not entrusting the creative aspects of games to AI.”

The comments follow Sega’s establishment of an ‘Generative AI Committee’ to develop tools, establish guidelines around their use, and conduct compliance checks for Steam listings. The committee’s existence was revealed at a CEDEC talk last year.

According to 4Gamer, “because views on generative AI differ across different regions of the world”, the committee’s governance system includes members from Sega’s public relations and legal departments in each region.

Notably, some of Sega’s games have already attracted divisive reactions following confirmation that AI was used in their development.

Earlier this year, the company confirmed that generative AI was used during ‘the initial research phase’ of the upcoming Crazy Taxi: World Tour’s development, but assured that it wasn’t used for the actual creation of any art assets in the game

Earlier this year, MMO Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis confirmed the use of AI “as a productivity tool in the development process,” as well as for an in-game conversation function, allowing players to receive real-time AI responses to messages.

While AI creation remains a grey area in much of the world, with governments, artists, and companies deliberating how best to move forward, Japan declared in 2023 that using datasets to train AI models doesn’t violate copyright law, even for commercial use.

A recent report on Japanese online game developers claims that 100% of those surveyed use generative AI tools. The Japan Online Game Association (JOGA) stressed that this report relates only to domestic (Japanese) games that are “played via the internet regardless of device”. It doesn’t include console or PC games, nor does it include mobile games that are standalone offline experiences.