Jeff Kaplan, the Blizzard veteran now running indie studio Kintsugiyama, has offered a refreshingly grounded take on artificial intelligence in game development. Speaking with podcaster Lex Fridman, Kaplan didn't dismiss AI outright, but he wasn't cheerleading it either.
He described current AI technology as "mostly a hot mess" when trying to integrate it into development pipelines, and felt it was "overconfident in what it tries to deliver".
AI as a tool, not a solution
The distinction Kaplan makes is subtle but important. He acknowledges that games are a technology-driven art form where you're "inventing the technology of your specific game", and that AI could play a role in that process. But current systems fall short in practical application.
Kaplan has hands-on experience with the major tools. He's used ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and art-generation tools like Midjourney. According to reporting from Kotaku, he used ChatGPT to try to solve a UI problem but received an incorrect answer from the bot.
At Kintsugiyama, which has 34 developers including fellow Blizzard veteran Tim Ford, Kaplan sees value in automating "points of tedium." He recently resized 2,000 images to the wrong dimensions, then used ChatGPT to fix them and package them into a file. "It made my life easier. It didn't take a job. That seems OK," he said.
The ethics question
Where Kaplan draws a hard line is on consent. He calls models lifting from artists and voice actors without their permission "immoral". In his words: "No one's creative work should ever be used for AI without their permission. It's no different than stealing."
This matters because the games industry, like film and visual arts, has watched major publishers quietly incorporate AI-generated content. Kaplan's studio appears to be taking a different approach.
The irreplaceable human
His final point cuts to why this conversation matters. Kaplan doesn't believe AI will ever truly replace real human creativity, saying no matter how good it gets, it will never draw like Overwatch artist Arnold Tsang or tell a story like Blizzard executive Chris Metzen.
Kaplan called AI an "interesting fever dream", which captures a lot about the current state of hype versus reality. The technology is fascinating and has genuine applications. But it's not magic, and it's not replacing what actually drives good games: the human beings making deliberate creative choices.
He's been through enough corporate pressure to know the difference between a tool that helps you work and a tool that's supposed to replace you entirely. That context matters when a veteran of his stature says what he's saying about AI's real place in development.