Xbox announces new AI partnership as fans threaten a boycott
Xbox fans have expressed displeasure with Microsoft after it announced a partnership with an AI NPC provider, with Xbox users vowing to boycott its brand over this news. NPCs previously were perceived as lacking personality but now this news may prove otherwise.
Microsoft made their announcement during the afternoon on 6 November via social media, beginning their tweet with this phrase on social media: “With more extraordinary tools come more extraordinary games”. Not sure why or how this sounds so cringe-inducing but I found it disarmingly cliche. Continuing: “We can’t wait to see what people create using these new AI-enabled game dev tools as we start working alongside @inworld_ai to facilitate developers achieving their creative vision more quickly!” The tweet concluded as follows: “We can’t wait to see what people create using new AI-enabled game dev tools!” The tweet concluded:
No creative is sold on AI due to its generic and often stolen content production capabilities. While YouTubers have enjoyed creating stories using artificial intelligence (AI), quickly turning X-Rated by using this tactic; overall however, AI hasn’t received positive reactions; its creators even failed to beat Pokemon Red’s second gym! How could AI possibly produce genuine, authentic pieces?
If AI doesn’t seem like much of an issue to you, allow me to show one reaction from this Xbox news: user @NullPointerEcho responded by uninstalling Edge and cancelling his Game Pass; as well as not purchasing anything owned developer-related until such time as unethical AI technology is removed from all Microsoft products.
“[Twitter’s] content generation strategy is disastrous for gaming as an overall experience,” wrote Pedro95 on Reddit, before going further and explaining that more content equals better always and this trend of content creation only leads to worse games being produced at studios under executive direction who believe more means better always; though its untruth has long since been disproven by numerous examples in real-life testing scenarios. Their anger could almost be felt through their screen.
INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS displayed their discontent by noting, “AI can create generic copywriting for websites, yet fails miserably at creating believable dialogue or story lines with any degree of depth,” before asking, “Why would I read/play something that wasn’t even written by humans? This is an intriguing question which many writers would love the answer for; nevertheless we won’t indulge them further here.”
At present, this partnership remains unknown in how it will alter Xbox’s experience – I hope not negatively, but anything could happen with acquisitions and partnerships.
