Blizzard Has All But Banned Generative AI Use unlike Activision, Sources Say in Report About How AI Is Taking Jobs in the Game Industry

Tsing

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Blizzard Entertainment, the Irvine-based video game developer and publisher best known for its Warcraft and Diablo games, including The War Within (World of Warcraft's tenth expansion) and 2023's Diablo IV, is one of the few gaming companies that have distanced themselves from the use of generative AI, according to a new investigative article that claims the studio, which launched in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, has, despite having developed its own AI tools, "all but banned generative AI" for use among its developers.

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Good blizzard should. Just... wow yea I will be avoiding Activision only products from here on out.
 
Why are there no reasonable people anymore? Why does everyone have to take one of the most extreme positions?
Guess using AI where it is appropriate and applicable is not an option? Either total ban or it is flowing from the taps?
 
Reading comprehension helps here. All but banned. Means it's not banned but restricted. So it isn't the most extreme response.
 
This is the interesting part:

According to multiple sources, Blizzard ... doesn’t allow devs to use publicly available AI generators, even as it develops its own AI tools.

So - they can use their own AI stuff, just not public stuff

Which ... tells me this isn't about AI at all. It's about Blizzard being afraid that their material (I would guess both whatever they are using to generate the content, and the generated content itself) will leak out into public domain, or they are trying to head off any potential licensing issues with a third party claiming that because it was generated either using their code, in part by material they provided to train the AI, or by the AI running on their hardware, that they hold some claim to the content.
 
Reading comprehension helps here. All but banned. Means it's not banned but restricted. So it isn't the most extreme response.
Reading more than the headline helps too. They completely banned generative AI,

Their own tools might not even be generative AI, as it is not specified what kind of AI they are developing internally. Even if it is generative its probably purpose built for specific tasks and not universal.
 
using public AI is effectively giving away your IP to the vendors. And people with sufficient knowledge to make the AI regurgitate information will be able to retrieve it. So yea... using public AI for your private IP is tantamount to giving it away.
 
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