Sony views AI as a 'powerful tool' to augment game development while preserving human creativity

Sony shared its AI strategy in an earnings presentation, stating that 'vision, the design, and the emotional impact' of games will continue to come from studio talent and performers, with AI meant to augment rather than replace capabilities.

At Sony studios, developers are using AI-powered tools to automate repetitive workflows, improve software engineering productivity, and accelerate quality assurance, 3D modeling, and animation. A tool called Mockingbird animates 3D facial models using performance capture data and completes work that previously took hours in 'a fraction of a second'; Naughty Dog and Santa Monica Studio have used it on titles including Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.

Sony partnered with Bandai Namco to explore how generative AI can serve video production, identifying 'massive gains in speed and productivity per person' and opportunities for 'highly sophisticated and realistic outputs' that were previously infeasible due to time constraints, though Sony noted the 'lack of consistency and controllability' as a weakness of generative AI models.