The Japanese company clearly does not want to end up in the kind of mess Pearl Abyss faced with Crimson Desert. Capcom has drawn a red line of its own: no AI-generated assets in the final games, but plenty of room for generative AI behind the scenes.
Capcom has made its position on generative AI tools and technologies much clearer. As generative AI becomes more common across the wider tech world, including game development, many are still debating whether the technology should have any place in the process at all. Data from the GDC State of the Game Industry Report showed that as more companies adopt these tools in different ways, more policies are also being created to define how they can and cannot be used. Capcom has now made its own stance public through answers given during an investor briefing, where the company responded to questions about how it is handling generative AI during development.
For Capcom, the line it will not cross – at least for now – is using generative AI tools to create assets that will actually appear in its games. As long as that policy remains in place, the studio should, in theory, avoid ending up in a situation like the one surrounding Crimson Desert, where Pearl Abyss claimed that generative AI-made elements were left in the retail build by accident and only acknowledged the technology after players spotted those assets in the game.
Graphics, Sound, and Programming Are Still Fair Game
What Capcom will do, however, is use generative AI to improve the efficiency and productivity of the game development process. The departments currently examining how the technology can be applied include graphics, sound, and programming.
“Our company will not implement the materials generated by our AI into game content. However, we plan to actively utilize this technology to improve efficiency and productivity in the game development process. Therefore, we are currently exploring ways to use it in various areas, such as graphics, sound, and programming” – the statement says.
This position arrived only a few days after the much-criticized reveal of NVIDIA DLSS 5, which featured Grace Ashcroft and Leon S. Kennedy from Capcom’s Resident Evil Requiem. That presentation became the latest example of generative AI edging further into game development, and it arguably widened the divide even more between supporters and opponents of the technology.
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