Razer‑Boss Min‑Liang Tan explains in the Decoder podcast by Nilay Patel why AI does not just mean holograms and anime waifus, but can truly relieve developers – and why gamers might benefit from it, even if they are currently skeptical.
How does Razer plan to use AI in development? Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan was featured in January 2026 at the CES technology fair in Las Vegas on the Decoder podcast by The Verge. There, he spoke about Project AVA, Razer’s AI assistant, and mainly about his outlook on the use of AI in game development.
Project AVA is an AI assistant designed to help you become better at your games. Razer itself describes the project on their official website as AI gaming co-pilot
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Tan emphasizes in the interview: AI should not generate content but rather relieve development studios of repetitive tasks. The use in quality assurance is particularly important. Through automatic error detection and structured error reports, games can be tested more efficiently and improved more quickly – without replacing human creativity.
What we […] do not reject are tools that contribute to improvement or support and help game developers create great games. […]
If there are AI tools that allow game developers to test their games faster and better and eliminate bugs, we all agree and would welcome it very much.– Min-Liang Tan on the Decoder podcast
AI slop in games raises concern
Why do many gamers believe that AI is bad for gaming? Tan admits in the conversation that many gamers are justifiably skeptical of AI – especially due to heated debates about generative AI, such as automatically generated artworks or dialogues. This concern is not unfounded: Subtle or very blatant (negative) examples continuously creep into current games.
A good example is the Zombie Santa from Call of Duty 7, which adorned the loading screen with an unusual number of fingers (via Standard). There is also intense discussion in the industry about the use of such AI (via taz).
Nevertheless, the Razer CEO is convinced:
Gamers love AI in game development – they just don’t know it yet.
For him, the problem lies in perception: When AI invisibly helps in quality assurance or localization, players often do not notice that a tool is working in the background – but still experience a more stable game with fewer bugs.
Razer is already using AI integrations in various areas and also partially using generative elements. Currently, the company is cooperating in the headphone segment with OpenAI’s ChatGPT (Razer) and for the recently introduced AI assistant AVA with Elon Musk’s AI Grok (xAI)(Razer).
As long as AI helps in game development to take over repetitive tasks, there is more room for creativity – exactly therein lies a Nobel laureate’s great opportunity for the technology. Why he believes that AI will not take our jobs but rather provide us with more leisure time, you can read here: A Nobel laureate says that Bill Gates could be right
