On social media platforms like TikTok or YouTube, the artificial intelligence Midjourney is making waves: it generates fantastic images on demand. Behind it lies a lot of technology and powerful computing power. The mind behind it, David Holz, believes: artificial intelligence will radically change game development in a few years. But where does that leave humanity in its world?
What is the AI already doing?
- The AI “Midjourney” can be used through a Discord bot. It spits out freshly generated images on demand: the user types any scenario into the bot, and the AI designs images based on the user’s instructions within minutes.
- On TikTok, the AI went viral when people fed it the idea of showing the “last selfie ever taken on Earth.”
- But according to the founder of the project, David Holtz, that was just the beginning.
This is what happens when you ask the AI to depict Thrall from WoW as he summons a storm:
Some are currently using the AI to process the death of their dog
This is what he says about the AI right now: In an interview with PC Gamer, Holz explains (via pcgamer): At the moment, the AI still requires an extreme amount of graphics power to perform its task. We are talking about algorithms that “run all in the cloud on very large GPUs.” Holz mentions $40,000 GPU servers.
He says Midjourney is probably the consumer app with the highest computing demand ever.
With today’s technology, no computer games can yet be developed that are solely created by artificial intelligence.
Will we see artificially generated games at events like GamesCom soon?
In a “For the Heart” story, Holz explains: The AI is currently also being used for therapeutic purposes by users:
Some of them use the AI for purely therapeutic processes. It’s hard to understand, but you see strange images and ask: “Why are you letting the AI depict Maltese dogs in heaven?” And they say: My dog just died.
Studios could produce a lot of assets through the AI, even video game characters
What comes next? Holtz believes the AI will soon help studios create assets and characters for their video games “on the fly”:
You will have game studios using AI to bake a lot of assets, textures, landscapes, layouts, and characters. Even if it takes 10 minutes to create a high-quality character, that’s still much faster than the normal production process.
In the coming years, it will be about increasing the quality of images, bringing them into 3D, speeding up the processes, and making the results higher resolution: the chips will be getting smaller and capable of doing more things, Holtz believes.
Console with a gigantic AI chip should create games by itself
What should it eventually be like? Holtz believes someday the AI could create entire games from scratch, just like it creates images now. He says:
One day in the near future, you will be able to buy a console with a huge AI chip, and all games will be dreams.
Where does humanity fit into this function? Already, some artists worry that the AI could make their work obsolete, as artificial intelligence creates impressive images in minutes, which would take a person much longer, if they can even achieve it at all.
When asked whether the AI is supposed to replace humans, Holtz says:
We are not trying to build God; we are trying to enhance the imagination of the human species.
He hopes that through the AI, people will become more “visual” in culture and appreciate such things more.
More information about the AI, some images, and a guide on how to use the AI yourself can be found here:
The title image is also from Midjourney: This is what happens when you ask the AI to let Zavala from Destiny 2 and Thrall from WoW embrace each other.
