It’s Time For Epic Games And Its CEO To Touch Grass

Epic Games is under fire once again this week for its stance on AI, as the company is apparently pivoting to "AI-accelerated development"--and supreme overlord Tim Sweeney has been trying to make it seem as though he and his company are not bothered by the backlash even a little bit. But everything that Sweeney and his spokespeople have said this week makes them look like they're embarrassingly out of touch with the reality of our present moment. Maybe it's time for Sweeney to go outside and get some fresh air and remember what it was like to be a regular person who doesn't have a billion dollars and a powerful corporation that he rules with an iron fist. It kinda seems like he hasn't done that in a while. The fun this week started with a Bloomberg report about troubled production on a Marvel- and Star Wars-themed shooter game: one that would hook into Fortnite's system of cosmetics while being a standalone product. The project is reportedly behind schedule, and Bloomberg says the bosses at Epic are trying to compensate by offloading the so-called grunt work to Unreal Engine's AI tools, with new mandates that all code be written by AI and all art created with "full AI workflows." …

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