China: ChatGPT success sees gaming giants swarm to invest in AI

Chinese gaming companies are swarming to invest in artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) after seeing the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT. 

To attract engineers, researchers, and art designers with expertise in AIGC technology, at least a dozen gaming companies have posted online job listings on Liepin.com and Boss Zhipin, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Sunday. 

"Large tech companies like Tencent have been pushing ahead with AI applications for years, but they have not tapped very deeply into the vertical area of AIGC to date," said Zhang Shule, an analyst at CBJ Think Tank. 

The introduction of ChatGPT will compel game businesses to accelerate the development of AIGC while simultaneously spending more time on creative labor, which AI cannot replace, as per Shule. 

Giant Network, a Shanghai-based company, is offering an annual salary of up to 1.1 million yuan ($167,000) for an AI team leader. 

While as TapTap, a mobile game retailer, is paying interns with "strong foundations in computer vision or machine learning algorithms" up to 500 yuan ($73) a day.

AI threatening gaming expertise, expert warns

AIGC is already being used by several businesses to improve their products.

To enable players to engage with non-player characters created by its in-house studio Leihuo, NetEase, the second-largest video game developer in China, will implement a ChatGPT-like feature in Justice Online, a mobile game scheduled to launch in June.

Developers of AI chatbots MiniMax has received funding from miHoYo, the company behind the popular game Genshin Impact in China.

During a yearly gaming industry conference last month, Guo Weiwei, the CEO of Seasun, the gaming division of Chinese software company Kingsoft, predicted that "Over the next five years, AIGC will greatly change many aspects of the gaming industry." 

"In many battle games, the data gathered by the AI will repeatedly imitate the performance of high-level real person players," Weiwei said. 

"Just like playing chess online, it may be difficult to discern whether you are playing against an AI or a real person in the future."

However, several content producers have expressed concern that new technologies may threaten some gaming expertise, noted the SCMP report. 

Dash Huang Yimeng, the founder and chairman of XD Corp, noted on Twitter that he has observed two video game developers use AI to take the position of the external art design and translation teams.

"AI has actually begun to affect the jobs of many people," said Yimeng. "Everyone must be prepared to embrace change."