GoKawiilThis past week, Nvidia unveiled its new graphics upscaling technology, DLSS 5, with a new feature that gave in-game character models AI makeovers. Their drastically different appearances, which made them look like the "yassified" style popular in cheap mobile games, drew a public backlash -- not just out of revulsion for their appearance, but because it would change the work that game developers labored over without their input.
Gamers are rebelling over the use of generative AI in the games they play, especially when it isn't disclosed. That makes it tricky to use, whether to whip up code and art while making games or in player-facing materials like generating nonplayer character dialogue in real time in response to your choices.
Back in January, planners for the Game Developers Conference released their annual state of the games industry report for 2026, in which 52% of respondents reported that generative AI was used at their company, though only 36% said they're using it as part of their jobs; some say it's optional, at least for now. They mostly use the technology for research and brainstorming (81% of respondents), writing emails and scheduling (47%), or for code assistance (47%), among other tasks. But developers themselves are increasingly skeptical of generative AI, with 52% responding that it's bad for the industry -- up from 30% last year.
By the time the show rolled around in the middle of March, uncertainty around generative AI permeated GDC, held in San Francisco. Like most years, the professional convention was a nexus for members of the games industry to share lessons, make deals and forecast the next year in gaming. But as I walked around the halls of GDC 2026, I saw a stark juxtaposition: a handful of smaller games proudly using generative AI, and relative silence from the rest of the industry.
It's still very early days for the use of gen AI in video games. At prior GDCs, I'd seen primitive gen AI-powered NPCs running on Nvidia tech and Microsoft explaining how its Copilot tech would provide in-game tips and advice, but neither of these player-facing applications has really arrived in any big game in 2026, or even debuted at the margins. If there were a killer gen AI application that made its use essential in production or in gameplay, we'd have probably heard about it. Or as Chris Hays, lead services programmer at id Software, put it, gen AI isn't nearly as transformative as the true paradigm-shifting tech we've seen before.
"People weren't begging people to use the web when it came out. If [generative AI] was really as revolutionary as the web, people would be using it," Hays said.
I sat down with Hays, who is also a lead organizer at id Software's Big Friendly Union, and Sherveen Uduwana, treasurer at the United Videogame Workers union (which made its public debut at last year's GDC 2025), to chat about the state of the games industry, including how much generative AI is being used by developers. Between the two, the consensus was: not much. What they'd heard from the cases where it's used in development, humans had to step in and amend AI-created errors.
"I'm skeptical, even for the studios that say, 'We're implementing AI into the process.' We're not seeing the number of revisions that are happening after these AI-generated content, where essentially a worker is going in and fixing all these mistakes to the point that it possibly could have been done without the AI in the first place," Uduwana said.
Amusingly, Hays said, freelancers he's talked to have loved the AI push -- as they're hired to come in and fix AI's mistakes.
At Google's booth in the Moscone Center's West Hall, the company showed in-house demos of how Gemini can be used in games. In this example, players type conversational responses to NPCs to progress the game. David Lumb/CNET
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