Razer’s CEO says gamers hate generative AI slop even as the company invests nearly 600 million dollars in AI tools

Razer’s CEO, Min-Liang Tan, is dipping his toes into artificial intelligence as the company has now invested nearly $600 million in the technology. When asked for the motive behind this, Tan said that while gamers are sick of “generative AI slop,” the technology still provides developers with support tools to create better games.

Tan recently sat down for an interview with The Verge’s Decoder podcast and discussed what many perceive as resistance to AI in gaming. He noted that there’s a stark difference between low-quality content and productive, practical applications of AI in game development. With this reasoning, Tan’s investment aims to hire 150 AI engineers.

Tan clarified his stance during the interview and pointed out the disconnect between what gamers want and how companies have recently been pushing AI into the industry. He said:

So, I would say that the question is: ‘What are we unhappy with?’ When I say ‘we,’ I mean us as gamers. I think we’re unhappy with generative AI slop, right? Just to put it out there. And that’s something I’m unhappy with.

Like any gamer, I want to be engaged when I play. I want to be immersed. I want to be competitive. I don’t want to be served character models with extra fingers and stuff like that, or shoddily written storylines, and so on and so forth. I think, for us, we’re all aligned against gen AI slop that is just churned out from a couple of prompts and stuff like that.

Tan further continued:

What we aren’t against, at least from my perspective, are tools that help augment or support and help game developers make great games. And I think that’s fundamentally what we are talking about at Razer, right? 

So, if we’ve got AI tools that can help game developers QA their games faster and better and weed out the bugs, I think, along the way, we’re all aligned, and we would love that. If we could give game developers all the opportunities to create better games, to check for typos and things like that, I think we all want that. So, I think that’s the way I see it.

Many gamers and critics wonder whether the growing push for AI will pay off, especially amid recent fears of an “AI bubble” waiting to pop, as users aren’t seeing enough value in the technology to justify the investment.

This, however, hasn't stopped Razer from also attempting to capitalize on the ongoing AI hype as it sneaks in things like AI buttons in some of its mice and also hosts a dedicated Razer.ai website where it showcases some of its more ambitious projects under the same umbrella.