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Genshin Impact creator miHoYo’s co-founder sees AI revolution upending video-gaming jobs

‘For game developers – ranging from average to professional – we might as well consider switching careers,’ miHoYo co-founder Cai Haoyu said

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The success of blockbuster titles Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail made miHoYo a major video gaming studio in mainland China. Photo: Shutterstock
Ann Caoin Shanghai
The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the development of video games is poised to eliminate many jobs across the industry, according to Cai Haoyu, co-founder of Genshin Impact creator miHoYo.
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“For game developers – ranging from average to professional – we might as well consider switching careers,” Cai, 37, suggested in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.

He said the adoption of AI-generated content (AIGC) would lead to “only two types of people logically making sense when it comes to creating games” in the future.

The first type is the top 0.0001 per cent of “most insightful geniuses with the deepest understanding and exceptional design skills, forming elite teams to create something that has never existed before”, while the second type consists of the 99 per cent of “hobbyists who can create a game on a whim just to satisfy their own ideas”, according to Cai’s post.

Cai Haoyu is one of the three co-founders of Shanghai-based video gaming studio miHoYo. Photo: Handout
Cai Haoyu is one of the three co-founders of Shanghai-based video gaming studio miHoYo. Photo: Handout
His profound assessment of the current state of video game development echoes previous warnings of how AI will wreak havoc on industries from finance to healthcare.
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