The latest GDC survey also found that managers are more likely to use generative AI than their employees.
According to a survey of game developers published by GDC—the annual industry conference happening in San Francisco this March—33% of game dev professionals use generative AI for their work. This hasn’t changed much since 2021, when GDC reported that 31% of devs use generative AI, but how they feel about it has dramatically shifted.
This year, 52% of the more than 2,300 respondents said that they „think generative AI is having a negative impact on the game industry“, according to the report’s author, Beth Elderkin, who notes that just 18% said the same thing two years ago, and 30% last year.
The opposite opinion, that generative AI is good for the industry, was only found in 7% of this year’s respondents, a decline from 13% last year. The people least likely to approve of generative AI are who you’d expect: artists, designers, writers, and programmers.
The people who use AI the most are also who you’d expect. Ever since CEOs started hyping the technology as a productivity elixir, skeptics have suspected that the executive class is more likely to personally rely on chatbots, and GDC’s survey results are consistent with that hypothesis.
