There is no short supply of game studios and gaming industry executives embracing generative AI in pursuit of promised efficiency and profit, and there seems to be a rift forming between game developers and gamers as a result, with some game studios vehemently rejecting the idea of using AI on their creative output. As it turns out, Brandon Adler, the game director behind The Outer Worlds 2, falls into the latter category, with Obsidian Entertainment following suit. In a recent interview on the My Perfect Console podcast, Adler was asked about the use of AI in development and game design, he rejected the idea completely, saying that Obsidian does not use AI in its creative processes, and that it was not even on the table for Obsidian. Adler added that the studio "should never outsource the things its amazing at."

The director goes on to say that "We pride ourselves on our characters, in our world building, and it would be a damned shame for that to go away." Adler admits that there is generative AI present at Obsidian, but only for menial tasks, like summarizing meeting notes and as a research aid. Adler's comments come after news broke that EA has spent over a year integrating AI into its workflows, sometimes to disastrous effect. Meanwhile, the CEO of Take-Two has expressed a desire to train AI systems on voice data from actors to avoid having to record lines for every NPC interaction. The CEO of Epic Games, on the other hand, is adamant that AI disclosures, like the ones Valve makes developers use, are useless.

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