NetEase Reportedly Used to Have Generative AI Research Division but It Was Shut Down
Lollipop Chainsaw creator shared that the company told its employees not to use AI in games.
NetEase
UPDATE: NetEase has denied telling its studios to no longer use AI, as reported by Insider Gaming.
"The situation described did not occur, and we have not published any related policies," a NetEase spokesperson said.
With big tech companies hungry for AI, one might wonder what NetEase, one of the most prominent Chinese publishers, thinks about the matter. To no one's surprise, it did think about embracing generative AI and even reportedly had a research division focused on the tech, but it was shut down, according to Goichi Suda (known as Suda51), the creator of Lollipop Chainsaw, who is now working on the action-adventure game Romeo is a Dead Man at Grasshopper Manufacture, a subsidiary of NetEase.
Speaking to Eurogamer, he revealed that apart from this, the publisher also told its studios not to use AI in games, "to not use it at all." As for the reasons, Suda doesn't know for sure, but he has a couple of ideas:
"I don't know, they never explained directly why. If I had to assume, it was probably one or both of two things. A lot of gamers out there don't like AI and having it in their games. Another thing is issues with copyright infringement. That can be tricky to get around and clear before making something. That was probably part of it too – it would be easier to get rid of it altogether. But, again, that's my assumption. No one told me directly."
Well, at least some big players think about copyright infringement.
To be fair, not all generative AI is disliked by players with the same passion. A couple of years ago, NetEase shared its plans to implement ChatGPT into Justice Online Mobile so people can talk to NPCs about anything – a feature that works quite well in Where Winds Meet, a recent MMO hit also published by NetEase.
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