Electronic Arts announced A new partnership with Stability AI, maker of the AI image generation tool Stable Diffusion. The company will “co-develop transformative AI models, tools and workflows” for game developers, hoping to speed up development while maintaining quality.
“I use the term smart paintbrush,” EA Sports head of technical art Steve Kestel said in the announcement. “We’re giving our creatives the tools to express what they want.” For starters, the “Smart Paintbrush” EA and Stability AI are building focused on creating textures and in-game assets. EA hopes to create “physically based rendering tools” with the new tools “that create 2D textures that maintain accurate color and light accuracy in any environment.”
The company uses AI to “pre-visualize an entire 3D environment from a series of intentional prompts, allowing artists to creatively direct the generation of game content.” Stability AI is most famous for its powerful stability diffusion image generator, but the company maintains multiple tools Creating the 3D modelToo, so the partnership is by no means out of place.
EA partners
It helps that AI is on the tip of most video game executives’ tongues. Strauss Zelnick, head of Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two, Recently shared That generative AI “will not reduce employment, it will increase employment,” because “technology always increases productivity, which increases GDP, which increases employment.” Krafton, publisher of PUBG: BattlefieldMaking its commitment to AI even clearer, Announcing the plan Thursday will become an AI-first company. Companies with a direct stake in the success of the AI industry, such as Microsoft, have also developed gaming-focused tools and developed models for prototyping.
EA’s motivations may be simpler, though. The company is in private taking and will soon be saddled with billions in debt. Reducing costs with AI could theoretically be one way the company hopes to survive the transition.