AI, Games, and the Environment:
A Responsible User’s Guide

Principles in Practice

These principles in practice are intended to help turn the guiding principles into action and have been developed according to the three thematic groups of the principles.

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Governance: A strong governance system should underpin environmentally responsible use of AI​.

Establishing a vision for how AI will be used which complements, not threatens, talent​ and is consistent with your studio’s values.

  • Aim to prioritise uses that amplify developer capability and have a clear and genuine benefit.
  • Reflect on your studio’s broader values to help determine the right size and shape for the use of AI in your processes.
  • Engage staff in discussions about the adoption of AI and its implications.

Implementing a holistic governance approach on AI: 

  • A holistic governance approach should cover a range of focus areas (such as compliance, safety and ethics), yet should also explicitly address environmental factors​.
  • In some cases, there may already existing governance policies related to AI in your studio, check to see to what extent environment is addressed.
  • For many studios, responsibility for AI could fall within different teams and functions, such as IT, HR, procurement, R&D or sustainability, so you should plan to engage across teams.
  • Regularly review AI use and studio’s internal policy, as AI development rapidly progresses.

Frameworks like the EU AI act can provide a useful starting point to think about the shape of a governance policy.

High-level summary of the AI Act

High-level summary of the AI Act, selecting the parts which are most likely to be relevant to you regardless of who you are.

artificialintelligenceact.eu

Small Businesses’ Guide to the AI Act

Everything you need to know about the AI Act, for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the EU and beyond.

artificialintelligenceact.eu

Assessing risk and opportunity with the use of AI tools

Keeping humans involved at every key decision point:

  • Keep people involved for significant decisions and outputs, particularly for high-risk areas of AI use.
  • Maintain clear accountability for decisions made relating to the use of AI.

Both creative and non-creative tasks have different risks and opportunities. For example, the use of AI tools, particularly in creative, player-facing situations may risk alienating players from the conversation on environment. Before using AI tools, take stock of the risks and opportunities.

Risks Opportunities
Reputational risks Potential to complement certain business functions and production processes.
Legal risks (e.g., intellectual property and licensing, data protection, etc.) Potential to help solve technical challenges.
Privacy and safety of players and users Potential to support internal knowledge sharing and learning..

Studios should assess the risks associated with the specific uses of AI tools in their processes, such as shown in the example below:

Higher-risk areas Lower-risk areas
Player facing content and in-game assets (e.g., generative content used for character design, story content and in-game objects). Administrative tasks (e.g., meeting transcriptions).
Use, generation or modification of copyrighted material and intellectual property. Internal knowledge management (e.g., studio’s own internal chatbot tool).
Processing of sensitive information and player data. Back-end development processes (e.g., code optimisation).
Agentic applications with little human oversight. Early ideation and prototyping (e.g., early storyboard conceptualisation).
Machine learning upsampling solutions.