The head of Sony, Hiroki Totoki, has spoken openly about the company’s policy on AI usage in its games, giving fans an insight into the logic behind the company’s creative decisions.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Totoki was asked where Sony “draws the line” when it comes to using generative AI in developing its products and software to avoid alienating fans and artists. Totoki responded that people embrace great IPs that are “created by humans” and that Sony “respects those narratives and stories”, referring to the company’s legacy of well-received stories such as The Last of Us and God of War.
The interviewer also raised comments made by Sony Interactive Entertainment’s CEO Hideaki Nishino regarding AI usage in games, who was reported as saying PlayStation studios are already using AI tools for labor-intensive tasks like animating hair. Totoki said that Sony was working to find “a good line” on AI usage to maintain creative integrity but help speed up game development and drive growth.
Totoki responded that people embrace great IPs that are “created by humans” and that Sony “respects those narratives and stories”.
Totoki’s remarks came as part of a wide-ranging interview on Sony’s video gaming legacy and the challenges it faces with the rise of AI systems that can ultimately usurp the jobs of video game creatives like artists, writers and composers.
In the interview, the Sony CEO also shared that the company is no longer aggressively pushing sales of the PlayStation 5, saying the console is in its twilight period. Instead, Sony will focus on extracting revenue from its huge player base of roughly 125 million through incentives like PlayStation Plus, the platform’s online subscription service.
Totoki rounded off the interview by saying Sony’s primary goal for future innovation would be “experience over entertainment” and that the company’s key motivation would be to get people excited about Sony’s upcoming projects. Patents filed by the company have already revealed details about the upcoming PlayStation 6, but otherwise, facts are scarce.
Sony Is Already In Hot Water… But Could It Get Hotter Still?
Fan response to Totoki’s comments on AI could go either way, and may further deepen the hole Sony has found itself in after announcing last month that it would stop supporting physical games from January 2028. Social media has been scorched with incendiary comments from PlayStation owners who have decried the company’s move as anti-consumer.
On the AI front, some fans may be pleased that Sony is preserving its integrity by continuing to rely on industry-leading talent to craft complex and highly-praised narratives for its video games—something Totoki was explicit about in the interview.
But on the other hand, followers of the company who take a hardline stance against any application of AI, may be outraged that Sony is offloading development tasks onto these systems, no matter how time-consuming or strenuous they are. For them, it will be viewed as a denigration of artists and the theft of a job that could have gone to a true creative, as opposed to an AI tool.
Fan response to Totoki’s comments on AI could go either way, and may further deepen the hole Sony has found itself in.
Fan backlash to AI usage has become a widespread industry problem, recently affecting titles such as Vapor World, whose studio was forced to remove AI cutscenes after a spate of negative comments from players online. Studio director Young Kim apologized to fans online, adding: “[I] expected some of you would be disappointed by our use of AI […] I did not expect it to become this big.”
However, Sony is only following the lead of other mega-publishers such as Capcom, who shared recently that they will use AI to help “unlock the potential of creators” and lighten human workload on labor-intensive tasks. The company has already used such tools in six to eight of its titles, including the recent smash-hit Pragmata.
Other companies, such as the Berlin-based Klang Games, are making AI systems their entire USP, debuting their game SEED earlier this year. The game made waves online for using thousands of persistent AI NPCs that live, work, and continue to build their society 24/7, even when players log off.
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