Over half of game developers surveyed at this year’s Game Developers Conference believes AI has a negative impact to their industry, report says.

The survey has supplemented the 2026 State Of The Game Industry report outlining the major issues and demographic of gamers within the past few years, from gender, home country, occupation and their opinions of the industry today.

The percentage has increased, says survey author, Beth Elderkin who states only 30-percent of people were against AI last year, with nearly 65-percent of the 2,300 respondents also said they do not use AI in their work.

The majority of AI-users work in the creative sector and claim they mostly use it for research and brainstorming.

The report has published after weeks of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma promoted the future of AI at Xbox, announcing yesterday the implementation of new AI software, Gaming Copilot to all consoles by the end of the year.

The announcement and press release included a podcast and video displaying how the Gaming AI would function by assisting players in over 1000 selected games when asked, similar to home devices like Alexa.

Xbox Corporate Vice President of Gaming AI, Fatima Kardar on the podcast remarked playing videogames is the only form of entertainment where you can get stuck.

“It’s not just about AI showing up to help you, it’s about AI showing up at the right moment,” Kardar said.

“We really have to think about the experience we’ve built, it cannot be intrusive.”

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The news of AI assistance on Xbox has sparked more negative comments from news outlets and people online since major game companies were caught using AI generated content and art in their work.

Some of the issue stem from how the AI will gather information and data on users as well as how much it will incorporate itself into Xbox user’s experiences.

However, most complaints are against the software replacing art and other creative assets usually made by people, preventing more jobs in the future.

Videogame companies have been in hot water for including AI generated content in games absent of the software, including Epic Games for adding voice lines of James Earl Jones for a Star Wars event on Fortnite.

Recently, games marketplace Steam have begun forcing developers and publishers to disclose AI usage for any games they make displayed on the store page.

The backlash of AI in the industry has gone so far as last year’s winner of Indie Game of the Year, Clair Obscur being stripped of the award after not disclosing the use of GenAI in its early development.

Major investor in AI companies, Moritz Baier-Lentz at the Game Developers Conference said he is shocked and saddened by how gamers and game developers have “demonised” GenAI (generative artificial intelligence) and insisted gaming hardware company Nvidia uses AI to write their code.

Nvidia announced they will be cutting back on the manufacturing of their hardware to focus on AI last month during a worldwide GPU shortage.

Recently, games marketplace Steam have begun forcing developers and publishers to disclose AI usage for any games they make displayed on the store page.

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Microsoft and Xbox are currently trialling the Gaming Copilot Beta on the mobile app

I prompted it: What is your opinion about negative backlash towards the installation of AI in the gaming industry?

“I think the backlash is real, understandable, and in some cases justified — but it’s also often misguided,” it responded.

“The core issue isn’t ‘AI in games,’ it’s how studios are choosing to use it, and whether it replaces creativity instead of empowering it.”

The AI then said it was someone who lives in the gaming world every day.