Ah, what a lovely way to kick off 2024, eh?
Square Enix’s President Takashi Kiryu has revealed that the company will be “aggressive in applying” AI in its content development and publishing divisions in the future after he praised the technology in a New Year’s Letter (thanks, VGC).
Published on January 1st, 2024, the letter outlines industry innovations and Kiryu’s vision for Square Enix moving forward. With AI specifically, he mentions that “generative AI has the potential not only to reshape what we create but also to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming”.
Kiryu then presents Square Enix’s goals as it moves into 2024, stating his intention to increase knowledge sharing in the company, optimise resource allocation, promote global collaboration, and other thrilling means of conducting serious business.
In an alarming but not altogether surprising paragraph, he then mentions that Square Enix will be “aggressive in applying” AI for both short-term and long-term means:
“We also intend to be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions. In the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts. In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities.”
Sounds rather yucky, though we’d like to keep an open mind for now; the short-term applications sound entirely inoffensive, after all, but we’re a bit wary of these so-called ‘new forms of content’. This might not necessarily be games, but we’re just going to have to wait and see what Square Enix has in store as we move through 2024.