😺 Can AI be gaming's savior?

PLUS: The top 100 most popular AI tools for work

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Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

We share why AI could be the next big thing in gaming.
Google is working on AI that can create entire video games.
FlexOS released the top 100 AI tools for work by web traffic.
Perplexity’s monthly traffic is still less than 0.1% of Google’s.

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Why AI isn’t big in gaming yet (but will be, soon).

Google just announced it’s working on “generative infinite games”, where everything, including the story and rules, is powered by genAI. This new system is Google’s bet that “in the future most games will be entirely generated.” Whoa.

On the technical side, gaming is ripe for AI disruption:

AI moderation just reduced voice-chat toxicity in Call of Duty by 43%.
Sony shared how AI is improving QA.
Engines like Unity and Unreal are steadily incorporating more AI services, like idea generators.

And the potential for AI fun in games is big, too:

Gen-AI art.
Text-to-game dev tools (see cool Roblox and EA examples).
There’s also NPC dialogue (see this Ubisoft demo.)

Ubisoft NEO NPCs Gameplay: AI-Powered Characters in Video Games

But despite this handful of examples, real-world uses in gaming are few, which might seem odd for an industry so well suited to its use. That’ll probably change soon, given how bleak things are on the business side.

Here is a speedy 2020–2024 history lesson:

2020 into 2021: COVID boosted the industry as people spent more money. Companies lapped it up, grew fast. Some overextended.
2022: Record-breaking layoff numbers.
2023: Record-breaking layoff numbers again.
2024: Record-breaking layoff numbers again again—this time by June. Yikes.

There’s obviously a lot more to it; read Matthew Ball’s excellent piece here for all the deets. But in short: inflation, sky-high dev costs, the COVID rebound, and much more has pushed the industry into what some (like Matthew Balle) would argue is a crisis.

Our take: Competition for gamers’ attention is insane right now. And 61% of that attention is being taken by games at least six years old, like Fortnite and Roblox. New big-budget games are far from guaranteed successes.

All this means game-makers are scratching their heads, looking under the sofa for answers. So while AI isn’t super prevalent now, you can bet it will be, soon—which might explain Google’s big bet.

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Treats To Try.

Our friends over at FlexOS released the top 100 most popular AI tools for work by web traffic. Here are the top 10:

A few other interesting takeaways from the report:

Perplexity’s web traffic is still less than 0.1% of Google’s.
Last month, ChatGPT’s web traffic grew 18%, Gemini’s grew 3%, and Claude’s grew 1%.
Gamma is the most popular AI presentation generators, a use case that is growing rapidly.

See The Neuron’s top 51 AI Tools for Business here!

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