Minecraft Seeks to Employ AI for Merchandising, Content Moderation

Minecraft developer Mojang Studios is now exploring more partnerships with AI firms to power its merchandising and content moderation operations.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Mojang Studios chief Åsa Bredin hinted at plans to help the company "cater to a lot of people" as Minecraft reaches wider mass appeal.

It can be remembered that a Minecraft movie with Warner Bros. Studios is already in the works and another Netflix series is also in production.

So far, the developers have only employed AI tools to help moderate chats and content in the game to accommodate various age groups.

Bredin's statements came after reports of Mojang Studios' parent company Microsoft expanding its chatbot features across several Xbox and Minecraft titles.

Minecraft Developer to Still Prioritize Talent Over AI

While the company may lean more towards AI in the future, Mojang and Bredin assured that they would still prioritize human talent over AI innovations in bringing future plans for Minecraft to reality.

The statement was made in response to the growing worries in the gaming industry as more developers conduct mass layoffs and cutdowns to keep up with their revenues.

The main Mojang Studios has not reported any major layoff for years, although it has discontinued several game development projects with partnered studios that later resulted in job cuts.

Game Developers Lean Towards Generative AI to Expand Operations

The Minecraft developer is the latest studio to indicate plans on leveraging generative AI in the game development and distribution processes.

Earlier this year, Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchise publisher Square Enix hinted at plans to become "aggressive" with AI for future game developments and marketing operations.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has also raised the idea of integrating generative AI to "enrich NPCs to be more intelligent, more interactive."

So far, only Nintendo has declared a clear stance against using generative AI in game development.