Elon Musk's AI Game Studio Promise Sparks Skepticism in Gaming Industry

Terminal promiser Elon Musk says he'll make a great AI game in 2026

2021's weirdest dark fable turns an old fairy-tale obsession into new horror If Elon Musk will be remembered for one innovation, it'll likely be his ability to keep hope alive for fans and investors in spite of his ongoing track record. The world's richest man is now promising that he'll be at the forefront of progress in the video game industry, where his nascent studio is aiming to create a "great" AI-generated experience. Musk made the declaration in a quote on his social media site X, in response to a user sharing an AI-generated video by Grok, the entrepreneur's artificial intelligence technology. Though it is short, the video appears to be loosely based on games like Battlefield 6. In it, a soldier can be seen trailing a tank down a combat-riddled street, occasionally shooting bullets at a non-existent target. The video is impressive at first glance thanks to its realistic graphics. But oddities are obvious almost immediately, from the way the soldier seems to be skating down the road to the delayed bullet shells, or the sudden appearance of an enemy tank. Now, what Musk is responding to here is merely a video, not a playable experience. But his company, xAI does appear to be pursuing game development of some sort. As spotted by IGN, xAI is currently hiring what it calls a "video game tutor" who is meant to train Grok in the world of video games. The tutor will be paid somewhere between $45 and $100 an hour. The job description doesn't sound creative as much as it sounds administrative. Here's part of the posting: You will use proprietary software to provide labels, annotations, and inputs on projects involving game mechanics, narratives, and design elements. You must support the delivery of high-quality curated data that enhances AI's understanding of gaming principles and outputs. In this effort, you will collaborate with technical staff to develop tasks that improve AI's ability to generate and refine video game content. You'll also work with technical staff to improve annotation tools for efficient workflows. The same listing also notes that the team at xAI is small but motivated. That small team will somehow theoretically compete with the studios working on similar franchises, like Call of Duty or Battlefield, which are the products of thousands of individual workers. Granted, AI is often pitched as a means for efficiency, which could theoretically downsize the need for such enormous game development teams. But many major studios are already exploring AI technology, and they still need a small army to produce AAA games. One could even argue that it is exactly that excess, scope, and price that defines what a modern blockbuster game is. So far, many of those exploratory attempts have been as controversial as they have been erratic. Companies like Ubisoft and Nvidia have explored AI-generated dialogue, which, while functional, is still eerily uncanny. Other attempts, like Epic Games' AI-powered Darth Vader, show promise in their versatility to respond to player input... most of the time. Even with programmed guardrails, fans were able to get Darth Vader to do all sorts of things, like repeat slurs. The path to this mythical AI-generated future will also likely be paved by landfills of slop, as evidenced by all the questionable games that have been filling up digital stores of late. Then there's the environmental factor to consider: Do we really want to waste our limited fresh water on the most lifeless games imaginable? Even placing aside the moral and environmental factors, part of the skepticism around AI usage in the gaming industry stems from the fact that the medium does not, in any way, lack technological capacity. Arguably, it's the only thing new consoles can promise with certainty: This hardware will be more capable than what you've played before. Despite that, the world of AAA games only grows bleaker as gaming studios take fewer chances and publishers resort to more layoffs. Larian Studios' publishing director Michael "Cromwelp" Douse nailed it completely in a post responding to Musk's grand claim when he says, "AI has its place as a tool, but we have all the tools in the world and they aren't compensating for the incredible lack of cogent direction ... there is no craft without the human touch; the relative skill issue, or 'the exhibition of otherness.' To turn games into digital, emotionless content is to abandon all resonance." Still, the encroaching threat of AI does not seem to be slowing down in the gaming industry. New AI tech, like OpenAI's Sora, makes it easier for every "ideas guy" to vie for a future where their game development genius is merely one correct prompt away. AI-generated videos based on games that look incredible are flashy enough to erode more practical concerns, like how do you make a multi-hour experience from something that only looks good in snippets? Or are we simply moving toward a future where the public makes peace with the rough edges? AI-generated videos are already abundant on apps like TikTok and Facebook, and they garner millions of views despite glaring flaws, simplistic narratives, and generic aesthetics. Whatever the case, Elon Musk has been beating this drum for a while now. Musk proclaimed that his studio would "make games great again" in 2024. A year later, the world is still waiting.

Elon Musk's AI-fuelled fever dream gets even hotter as he promises his AI game studio is going to release a 'great' game before the end of 2026

Remember when Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest man and owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and X, said that too many game companies are owned by giant corporations and so his giant corporation was going to start a game studio to "make games great again?" And even better, in the completely ironic sense, it was going to be "an AI game studio?" Apparently he wasn't kidding: Work is apparently progressing, as Musk said on X that the studio's debut game will be out sometime in 2026. "The XAI game studio will release a great AI-generated game before the end of next year," Musk wrote on X, reposting a short clip of what is apparently Grok-created animation of a guy on a unicycle charging a burning tank while firing an automatic rifle that another X user said, correctly, "looks like absolute dogshit." That's the extent of the update so it's not much to go on, but I think it's interesting because of the way Musk brought the whole thing up entirely unprompted. I speculated when this AI game studio was 'announced' that it was unlikely to go anywhere but held out hope that it might, strictly for the potential spectacle, not unlike his train wreck purchase of Twitter. Dragging it all back into the light a year later points to some level of commitment, which doesn't necessarily mean this thing will actually be finished -- but it might. Will the xAI game studio release something in 2026? It's possible, sure. Videogames made with generative AI already exist and there's no reason Musk's company can't belch out something similar. The catch is that bit about it being "great." It's a subjective term but one that most of us can probably agree on in at least the broad strokes. Is the cybertruck a great vehicle? No. Is it great that Musk spends so many hours on X posting racism, transphobia, and AI slop? Again, I would say no. Is xAI's AI-generated videogame going to be great? Look, anything is possible, but I think you can guess which way I'm leaning. Around the same time Musk announced that his AI-powered game studio is doing something, he also predicted that his Grok AI "will make a movie that is at least watchable before the end of next year and really good movies in 2027." He also confirmed that another of his ideas that I assumed was either a joke or a heat-of-the-moment utterance to be forgotten is in fact moving ahead as a real thing: An early beta version of Grokipedia, an AI-powered 'replacement' for Wikipedia, is set to go live later this month.

Baldur's Gate 3 Dev Calls Out Elon Musk's AI Game Promise - Kotaku

Musk claims his AI studio will release an AI-generated game in 2026 I love dunking on Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who ruined a social media platform, apparently sucks at video games, and played a key role in the United States’ descent into fascism. It’s one of my favorite pastimes here on this website. The cool thing about dunking on out-of-touch rich people is that it’s not just writers who can engage in this storied tradition. People who actually have first-hand knowledge and experience with the industries these motherfuckers love to parachute into can also participate. And when I see Larian Studios’ Michael Douse, the director of publishing at the acclaimed RPG studio responsible for the excellent Baldur’s Gate 3, saying that Musk’s promises of an AI-generated video game are a bunch of bullshit, I believe him. Musk has founded an AI video game studio called XAI, and says that the Grok-powered team will release a "great" AI-generated game before the end of 2026. He makes this claim in a tweet posted above AI-rendered footage of a nonexistent military shooter that looks like shit. Musk, a man known for making promises he can’t keep, may put out some AI-generated slop game in 2026, but is anyone really asking for that beyond his biggest simps? Douse, meanwhile, who works at a studio that makes games people actually like, responded to Musk’s plan with a tweet of his own, arguing that while AI can be a tool in game development, it lacks the vision that makes good games. “Genuinely, what this industry needs is not more mathematically produced, psychologically trained gameplay loops, rather more expressions of worlds that folks are engaged with, or want to engage with,†Douse wrote. “AI has its place as a tool, but we have all the tools in the world, and they aren't compensating for the incredible lack of cogent direction. AI isn't going to solve the big problem of the industry, which is leadership & vision.†I just like watching people who know their stuff smack down people who are just parachuting in without any real understanding of how any of this works. Baldur’s Gate 3 is out on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Mac, and Linux, and it’s good as hell.

Elon Musk Could Bring an AI-Generated Game Before GTA 6

In April, Microsoft released an AI-generated playable Quake II demo Elon Musk on Monday announced that xAI's gaming division, xAI Game Studio, will launch a "great" artificial intelligence (AI)-generated game before the end of next year. This is not the first time the billionaire entrepreneur has floated the idea of an AI-generated game. Last year, he made a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) about "too many game studios" being owned by "massive corporations". xAI has also posted a job listing for an AI tutor who specialises in video games to teach Grok the first principles of gaming. xAI Game Studio to Release an AI-Generated Game Next Year In a post on X, Musk said, "The XAI game studio will release a great AI-generated game before the end of next year." The post was made as a reply to another user who claimed that in the future, Grok will dynamically generate video games. Musk did not mention whether the AI-generated game from xAI Game Studio will also be dynamically generated. The idea of an AI company creating video games was floated by the billionaire in November 2024, when he posted about corporations owning game studios. At the time, he said xAI is going to start an AI game studio. Not much was heard about the gaming venture till February, when Musk said during an xAI presentation, "We're launching an AI Gaming studio at xAI. If you're interested in joining us and building AI games, please join xAI!" xAI has also listed a job opening on its website for a video game tutor. The AI tutor's responsibilities include training and refining Grok to help it master game concepts, mechanics, and generation by providing labels and annotations. The role highlights that human oversight will possibly play a role in the AI-generated game that Musk mentioned. Interestingly, the announcement about the AI-generated game coincides with the new update to Grok Imagine's video generation capability. With the new update, both the output quality as well as generation times have been improved. However, it cannot be said if the capability will be used for the development of the game. xAI is also not the only company chasing AI-led video game generation. Google DeepMind has tested and published papers about several such models, and in April, Microsoft released an AI-generated playable demo of the classic Quake II game.

Baldur's Gate 3 publishing lead sees Elon Musk's new AI-generated game, says "AI has its place as a tool" but won't "solve the big problem of the industry, which is leadership and vision"

The industry doesn't need "more mathematically produced, psychologically trained gameplay loops" Amid the rise of AI-generated actors, materials, movies, and now games, one Baldur's Gate 3 developer has shared his thoughts on the use of artificial intelligence within the gaming industry - and it's safe to say he doesn't exactly see it as a positive thing. We've done it, folks - we've reached that unfortunate point in humanity's timeline in which AI is apparently capable of generating full-blown games, as Elon Musk is setting out to prove with his xAI studio and its first release in 2026. Unsurprisingly, many folks don't feel great about any of this, developers like Larian Studios' publishing director Michael "Cromwelp" Douse included. A recent thread in response to Musk's new "game" proves as much. "Genuinely, what this industry needs is not more mathematically produced, psychologically trained gameplay loops, [but] rather more expressions of worlds that folks are engaged with, or want to engage with," writes Douse. "AI has its place as a tool, but we have all the tools in the world, and they aren't compensating for the incredible lack of cogent direction. AI isn't going to solve the big problem of the industry, which is leadership and vision." He continues: "Idk why nobody ever talks about this, but before the collapse of retail, it was retail itself that set the rules: quality (lest buyback), price, availability, etc. When it crashed, the sensible default would be to enjoy cutting out the middleman and connecting directly with audiences in a sort of 1:1 relationship. That did not happen. It became a game of headless chickens racing to the P&L sheet. AI isn't going to solve that." Douse then states, "Those who will succeed are those who are people building something for people." As he explains, though, none of this is exclusive to just gaming. "Like all growing markets, cloud, sub, etc, it will be a matter of time before there are roots. There will be roots. But not necessarily in the direction the industry as it currently stands needs to heal from the rug of retail being pulled beneath its feet." He goes on, saying something I think all of us can agree with: "We need more human-human expression, not less. So much of tech (VR, cloud, etc) has been a VC cash grab. We don't need another cash grab; we need sustainability. That's what the tools could be good for. Definitely not replacing people. There simply is no resonance without mutual respect. There is no mutual respect without respect for craft." As the publishing lead concludes, "There is no craft without the human touch; the relative skill issue, or 'the exhibition of otherness.' To turn games into digital, emotionless content is to abandon all resonance... which is why people play!" He isn't wrong - although I'm on the "gamer" or "consumer" side of things rather than being a developer myself, I'm frustrated with the rise of AI-generated content and agree with Douse's thoughts. This isn't the first time Douse has shared his thoughts on the industry, either, and he's not the only Baldur's Gate 3 dev to have done so, either. Larian Studios lead and director behind the Dungeons & Dragons RPG Swen Vincke recently spoke out amid EA's $55 billion buyout "to remind people that making games faster and cheaper while charging more has never worked before" - wise words with plenty of experience and knowledge backing them.

Elon Musk promises fully AI-generated game by next year

Coders, designers, artists? Nonsense, says Elon Musk, who claims we won't be needing them much longer. Through his newly founded xAI Games, Musk promises to release the world's first video game created entirely by artificial intelligence -- no human hands involved. Musk, who's been heavily investing in AI infrastructure (including the purchase of tens of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs), says his AI model Grok will be trained and upgraded to handle the entire development process -- from concept and design to code and gameplay mechanics. It's an ambitious, and deeply controversial, vision. While AI tools are already used in parts of modern game development, creating an entire game autonomously represents a whole new frontier. Sure, visuals and design might be easy for machines to handle soon -- but gameplay balance, emotional resonance, and narrative structure still rely heavily on human intuition. Whether Musk's project becomes a genuine revolution or just another tech provocation remains to be seen. When do you think we'll see the first fully AI-made game hit the market?

Elon Musk's xAI is Set to Release Its First AI-Generated Game in 2026

xAI has been hiring indie game developers for its project, but besides the release date, not much is known. Elon Musk has been actively talking about AI game development, and today he took it to X to announce that xAI's in-house game studio will be coming out with its first "great" title before the end of 2026. Elon Musk's xAI has been looking to expand into game development for quite some time now. In February this year, he shared a job posting on X for game developers who are "interested in designing AI games first principles." Musk also reshared a job posting for game developers to join the xAI game studio on 2nd October. This brings us to today, when Musk shared a post on X announcing, "The XAI game studio will release a great AI-generated game before the end of next year". Now, it is unclear what genre of game it will be, or even what the xAI CEO means by "great AI-generated game" in general. The project could employ the latest Grok 4 model as well as the Grok Imagine video generator to create virtual worlds in real time. Gaming studios are already employing AI in game development, whether it is for AI art or voice acting. Microsoft already showcased an AI-generated version of Quake II, which can generate gaming visuals in real-time, while Roblox has come out with its AI tool called the Roblox Cube to help developers build new games. So, the idea of a completely AI-generated game does not sound far-fetched. Although we do not have much detail on what kind of game xAI is working on, given Musk's preference for RPGs (Role Playing Games) like Diablo IV, The Battle of Polytopia, and Path of Exiles, we can speculate that its first big title could be a new IP in that genre. However, it could also be a first-person shooter similar to Call of Duty or Battlefield, given their mass appeal with the audience.

xAI Will Release a 'Great' Full-Scale AI Generated Game by Late 2026, Says Musk

Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest person according to Forbes, made a big claim yesterday when he tweeted that the xAI Game Studio would release a 'great' full-scale AI generated videogame by the end of next year. It was nearly a year ago when Musk, a known videogamer, announced that xAI, known mainly for the Grok generative AI chatbot, would 'make games great again': Too many game studios that are owned by massive corporations. @xAI is going to start an AI game studio to make games great again! Grok is considered to be one of the top chatbots, but making a full-fledged AI generated game (and a 'great' one at that) seems like a task far beyond the currently available technology to xAI and anyone else, for that matter. It was just two years ago when NVIDIA's VP of Applied Deep Learning Research Bryan Catanzaro, who can be considered the father of the DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) upscaling technology, said: I do not believe that AI is gonna build games in a way where you just write a paragraph about making a cyberpunk game and then pop comes out something as good as Cyberpunk 2077. I do think that let's say DLSS 10 in the far future is going to be a completely neural rendering system that interfaces with a game engine in different ways, and because of that, it's going to be more immersive and more beautiful. Over the last couple of years, there have been great advancements in the field of LLMs, but not nearly enough to create a great triple-A game yet, something I'm sure game developers are thankful for. That's not to say it will never happen, and AI will undoubtedly be used more and more in the gaming space, but to speed up and enhance the work of humans, not replace it outright. At least for the foreseeable future.

Elon Musk's AI video game claim sounds pretty far fetched

Another day, another case of Elon Musk using X to make a bold forecast that might have little connection to reality. Just after announcing that X's AI company will launch a Wikipedia rival called Grokipedia within two weeks, the Tesla CEO commented on xAI's ambitions to enter video game development. Musk wrote on X that the xAI game studio "will release a great AI-generated game before the end of next year". Somehow, I don't think it will be the end of the road for the best game development software quite yet. 'Great' and 'AI-generated' are not two adjectives that usually collate in any field, let alone video games. AI-generated video has been advancing at lightning speed, as demonstrated by the recent release of Sora 2 and the Sora social media app, but it's still a long way from being able to make a movie. Video games are more complicated, requiring real-time decision-making and functional constraints. A half-decent playable AI video game within a year sounds far fetched, let alone a great one. Elon first announced xAI's ambitions to enter the video game space almost a year ago in a tweet in which he pledged to end the dominance of big corporations in the gaming industry by using AI to make games for his big corporation. xAI would "make games great again," he said. Elon's claim that we'll see the first results by the end of next year was made on his retweet of a post from another user who suggested that Grok will be able to dynamically create video games for each player. The post was accompanied by some bad AI-generated video vaguely resembling the look of a Battlefield-style first-person shooter. Meanwhile, the xAI jobs board is advertising the post of 'video games tutor', seeking people to help train XAI's systems to build and critique games. Some are enthusiastic about Musk's plans. "Imagine playing a game that learns your style, adapts to your emotions, and builds new missions in real time. That's not sci-fi anymore, that's next year with AI," one person responded. "No more pre-written storylines, every game will literally think with you," another person predicts. But people seem to be forgetting that Elon has a long track record of vastly exaggerating his companies' capabilities. This is the CEO who said that Twitter, now X, could exceed a billion monthly users within 18 months under his control, that the Cybertruck would be a boat and that Tesla would have a fleet of a million fully autonomous robotaxis by 2020. Some of those commenting on Elon's post have pointed out how dubious the claim is from a technical point of view considering that Grok, and any AI, starts to hallucinate and produce broken code under high use. Others have suggested that there are already too many games with bad AI-generated content. We've debated generative gaming before. For some 'living games' in which gameplay is generated by players themselves is the next frontier, but it's not clear if it will be possible because of the huge amount of energy it would require, or even if there will be demand for games that are unique to every player and eliminate the social part of the cultural experience of gaming. If xAI does make a game next year, it won't be a self-generating one for sure. I predict that it won't be "great" either. That's not only because I doubt xAI's ability but because the first of anything is rarely great. And great games are normally built through passion, not by clicking fingers and issuing a deadline. If you do want to play some great current games, check out the best Prime day Nintendo Switch deals.

Elon Musk Promises His xAI Studio Will Release a 'Great' AI-Generated Video Game and Grok Will Make a Movie That Is 'At Least Watchable' Both Before the End of 2026 - IGN

Elon Musk has made a series of ambitious predictions about his AI tech and its ability to create video games and movies, although there is a healthy dose of scepticism online around the claims. In a tweet, the Tesla owner said his xAI game studio will use Grok to release a "great" AI-generated game before the end of next year. The statement was part of a QT of a video showing a rudimentary Call of Duty-style first-person shooter. Indeed, xAI has an open position for a 'Video Games Tutor' who will, for $45/hour - $100/hour, train Grok to produce "engaging, fun, innovative video games, enabling users to explore AI-assisted game design and fostering advancements in interactive entertainment through accurate annotations and iterative testing." The question of generative AI's impact on video games is perhaps the hottest topic within the industry. In June, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney predicted that small teams will soon be able to use AI prompts to make video games on the scale of Nintendo masterpiece The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Speaking to IGN at Epic's State of Unreal 2025 event (where CD Projekt revealed a stunning The Witcher 4 tech demo), Sweeney said AI prompts will be "a fundamental part" of game engines, and will result in "entirely new genres of games invented that weren't possible or practical before" without it. But Larian Studios' publishing director Michael "Cromwelp" Douse responded to Musk's claim to insist that AI "isn't going to solve the big problem of the industry, which is leadership and vision." "Genuinely what this industry needs is not more mathematically produced, psychologically trained gameplay loops, rather more expressions of worlds that folks are engaged with, or want to engage with," Douse said. "AI has its place as a tool, but we have all the tools in the world and they aren't compensating for the incredible lack of cogent direction." Douse continued: "There simply is no resonance without mutual respect. There is no mutual respect without respect for craft. There is no craft without the human touch; the relative skill issue, or 'the exhibition of otherness.' To turn games into digital, emotionless content is to abandon all resonance... which is why people play!" Musk is of course infamous for making broken promises, not just around Tesla, SpaceX, and his Cybertruck, but societal progress in general. "My predictions about achieving full self-driving have been optimistic in the past," Musk admitted to investors in 2023. "I'm the boy who cried FSD." Earlier this year he claimed robots will number in the tens of billions and be like "your own personal C-3PO or R2-D2, but even better." But his predictions for Grok didn't stop with video games. In a more recent tweet, Musk claimed Grok will make a movie that is "at least watchable before the end of next year and really good movies in 2027." That statement came as part of a QT of a six-second video showing generic Hollywood action. Like with video games, generative AI is the hot topic in the movie industry. Last week, SAG-AFTRA issued a strongly worded statement in response to the emergence of Tilly Norwood, the AI-generated "actress" that had enraged Hollywood. The backlash online has been vociferous, and it remains to be seen if Tilly Norwood actually goes anywhere. And then there's the very real danger of copyright infringement associated with the use of generative AI. Over the weekend, OpenAI vowed to give copyright holders "more granular control" over character generation after its Sora 2 app produced a flood of videos that depicted copyrighted characters -- including those owned by Nintendo. Indeed, Musk himself has had problems of his own with this issue. Last year, posts on Twitter containing images of Nintendo's iconic mascot generated by Grok were pulled offline due to takedown notices. Meanwhile, Disney and Universal have sued the AI image creator Midjourney, alleging that the company improperly used and distributed AI-generated characters from their movies. Disney also sent a cease and desist letter to Character.AI, warning the startup to stop using its copyrighted characters without authorization. "A lot of the videos that people are going to generate of these cartoon characters are going to infringe copyright," Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, told CNBC. "OpenAI is opening itself up to quite a lot of copyright lawsuits by doing this." Photo by VINCENT FEURAY/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images.