An additional conversation from a previous interview between Sega Asia and Persona series creative director and producer Kazuhisa Wada has many fans worried. First spotted by Persona Central, Atlus Asia’s Facebook account released the additional conversation detailing Wada’s various hobbies. While Wada initially called cycling his primary hobby, he added that his recent interest was the recent progress of AI technology, primarily the possible implementation of AI art in the Persona team’s future development process.
“I think the technology behind AI illustrations will be very useful in the future,” said Wada. “For example, when coming up with rough ideas, an AI can continuously output one idea after another, something that a single artist might struggle with. So I think that for early concept and idea formation, we could use AI right away. Our art team has been talking about wanting to implement AI.”
Unsurprisingly, Atlus fans were less than pleased with the news. Many took to Twitter to vent out their frustrations considering that Atlus has a widely beloved Art team, while others considered the angry reactions overblown.
The rapid advancement of AI technology has had many within creative fields weary about the future impact the technology will have on their fields. Early into the 2020s the technology was looked at as a simple fad for people to generate hilariously awful memes, but recent months have seen AI art winning art competitions, and the technology is only in its infancy.
That’s not to say that AI art is perfect as it is in its early stages. However, it has progressed so quickly that many companies are considering using it to fill roles. Soon enough it is highly likely that people within certain art careers, such as concept art, could lose their jobs.
Regardless, considering how other companies have adopted other disliked technologies like NFT blockchain technology, gaming companies looking into AI will become a common occurrence whether fans like it or not.