Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney, has a reputation for his hot takes on the gaming industry, and he has previously been vocal about both the perceived benefits of AI in gaming and his criticisms of its detractors. Now, the executive has expanded on his prior comments about Valve's mandatory generative AI disclosure, which he previously said "makes no sense for game stores," in a new interview with PC Gamer. These comments follow the recent announcement that Unreal Engine 5.8 and Unreal Engine 6 will add more generative AI features to the game engine. Addressing the question of AI art and how it may be more of a PR problem, Tim Sweeney said that "it's just a question of adaptation of tools, because there's nothing like a prompt-to-game solution on the horizon that anybody expects will work," going on to explain that artists at Epic Games are already using generative AI to "reduce the drudge work," referring to some of the more tedious parts of the 3D modelling and texturing process.

He goes on to advocate for using AI, stating that "it's impossible to reconcile the idea that developers shouldn't use productivity-improving tools with the state of the industry." He goes on to explain that how you go about creating an in-game asset isn't important, and that "you might spend a million dollars modeling a flower pot to get the most detailed flower pot creatable by humanity, but you could also scan a flower pot with a very high resolution camera," and that "the value is not in creating a perfect flower pot...the real value is in building the scene and building the game and building the narrative." Ultimately, his argument is that AI makes it cheaper to make games and in-game assets, but he argues that "it's unfortunate that so many developers are put into this position. If you want to launch a game and get it as widely publicized as possible, you've got to put it on Steam...then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game." He calls Valve's AI disclosure "irresponsible" and says that it makes it "much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success."

Sweeney's comments follow a recent analysis that saw AI games on Steam sell as many as 53% less units, so his argument that the tech deters players may hold water, however, it should also be mentioned that the aforementioned analysis also found that the backlash was worse when it was a large studio using AI, and that players frequently reviewed games made with AI more negatively. Anecdotally, there have also been several instances of backlash against successful games using AI art for final assets or during the development process, and several indie game developers have spoken out against the use of generative AI, including Pocketpair and Fireshine Games. The developer of Vampire Survivors also recently announced that it would be reconsidering its collaboration with Fortnite after Epic Games showed off an AI-heavy workflow on social media.

Despite his positive attitudes towards AI art, Tim Sweeney seemingly does not think that AI can replace artists in the game development pipeline, with the CEO commenting that "You're not going to create good art by giving a computer a prompt and having it spit out a mesh. You're going to get good art by an awesome artist using all of the tools available to make it."