Sega keeps game creativity human-led despite AI ideation in Crazy Taxi

Sega now says that it won’t hand creative work to AI, but the company already used it in Crazy Taxi: World Tour for ideation. The company says it’s being cautious with AI, but Sega’s stance seems more like a policy statement than a ban, since it has already tested the technology in Crazy Taxi: World Tour, which is available on Steam.

In an interview with Nikkei xTrend, Sega executive Tsuyoshi Saito said Sega will not entrust the creative aspects of its IPs and games to AI, even as the company already uses it in publishing, corporate departments, and to generate business ideas. Sega's Generative AI Committee polices the fine line by drafting guidelines and running compliance checks for platforms with AI disclosure rules, such as Steam, with legal and PR staff from each region in the room.

The definition of “creative” has become pretty vague, considering that Crazy Taxi: World Tour used AI for ideation and Sega’s own CEDEC session used image and motion generation for internal testing.

In the interview with Nikkei, Saito stated:

“We are using AI to improve efficiency in areas such as publishing and corporate departments, as well as for generating business ideas. However, we are being very cautious about its use in the game development process, and we are not entrusting the creative aspects of games to AI.”

When talking about the “creative” aspects of game development, it stands to reason: who defines them? The statement seems more administrative than technical. Sega’s Gen AI Committee, described at CEDEC 2025 by two Sega staff members, published one-page guidelines in April 2024, which had expanded to several pages by the time of the discussion.

Sega has been involved in AI before. During its November 2025 investor Q&A, published on December 3, 2025, the company said it had “strong resistance” to AI in creative areas such as character creation and promised to weigh each use case carefully. However, the company is back to square one.

That’s because Crazy Taxi: World Tour is where the lines start to blur. Sega’s current Steam disclosure says that generative AI was used in the ideation process for background objects and that “no AI-generated content will be included in the final game.”