Nintendo becomes the biggest company in the games industry⁠—and maybe the world⁠—to say 'no, thank you' to using generative AI

First reported by TweakTown, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said that the company was not planning on using generative AI technology for its games in a recent investor call. Furukawa's caution stands in stark contrast to most tech and gaming companies, which are either enthusiastically pursuing generative AI, or leaving the door open to do so in the future.

In response to the fourth question in the investor call transcript, Furukawa said the following (obtained via machine translation and edited for clarity):

«In the game industry, AI-like technology has long been used to control enemy character movements, so I believe that game development and AI technology have always been closely related.

Generative AI, which has been a hot topic recently, can be more creative [in its use], but I also recognize that it has issues with intellectual property rights.

Our company has [had] the know-how to create optimal gaming experiences for our customers for decades.

While we are flexible in responding to technological developments, we would like to continue to deliver value that is unique to us and cannot be created simply by technology alone.»

Despite legal, creative, and ethical concerns around generative AI tools that scrape the internet for image and text data to spit out a reconfigured, amalgamated form, the gold rush⁠—some might say bubble⁠—around the tech shows no signs of slowing down soon.

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Google now inserts a little AI generated answer box above the search results you want that will sometimes tell you to drink pee or eat rocks⁠—you can effectively turn it off, by the way⁠—while Microsoft entered into a partnership with an AI dialogue company for games at the end of last year, and recently had to back down on implementing an AI «Recall» feature that would track all activity on certain new Windows PCs. Ubiquitous GPU manufacturer Nvidia, meanwhile, has become the