The UK Government's New 'AI Adoption Plan' for Creative Industries
I look at the latest suggestions on AI for the creative industries
The first reports from the government’s new ‘AI Champion’ initiative are live.
Advocacy for an ‘augmentation first’ approach rather than replacement.
Dare I say it, a government report that actually sounds… sensible?
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Hello one and all, and welcome back to AI and Games. I’m back in ol’Blighty once more having spent the start of the week in Berlin. Monday was a very busy day as I started over at the Saftladen Indie Games Collective presenting a 3-hour session on AI in the video games industry on behalf of Medianet Berlin Brandenburg. Then was whisked across town to The Factory for TEDxBerlin where I sat on a panel about AI in the creative industries alongside Maximilian von Perfall (Strategic Partnerships Lead at YouTube), Ben Chimoy (GenAI Director at PROMPTR) and moderated by MediaNet CEO Jeannine Koch. Thanks to everyone for their enthusiasm and some great conversations at both Saftladen and TEDx, plus a shout-out to my friends in Berlin who I had the chance to catch up with and chat all things gamedev.
So yeah, great start to the week. But all that said, I’m fuckin’ knackered. You might recall two weeks ago I was in LA, and in between work trips we went and announced a conference! It’s been an insane schedule since I got back from vacation - and we still haven’t announced the other things we’re working on behind the scenes!
For this week’s edition we’re digging into the news in brief, but the big story is the latest publication out of the UK government on AI for the creative industries and their suggestions for the future. So let’s get cracking!
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AI and Games Conference
Of course last week we dedicated the issue to announcing the launch of the 2026 AI and Games Conference. We’re super excited to be once again hosting the Game AI community in London this November. So here’s some obligatory reminders:
Early bird tickets are on sale now at AIandGamesConference.com
Our call for speaker submissions is live and closes in August.
Plus we’re back to publishing videos from last year’s event. Sorry for the delay with that. I’m the bottleneck as I make the final review pass on all the videos. But fret not, we’re back this week with two pretty awesome presentations.
Press A for Assistance: Making Games Accessible with AI
Nonika Reingold and Steven Rice / University of Windsor
As games become more complex, there’s a need to consider how to ensure we provide features that support accessibility, approachability and learnability to support a wide range of players. We welcome Nonika and Steven who present on their perspectives on how we need to move forward in this space, and how various AI techniques ranging from classical Game AI to LLMs can be used to assist players without compromising the experience.
How to Power-Up Unreal Engine Behaviour Trees: Subnautica 2
Antonio Muñoz Gallego / Unknown Worlds
Subnautica 2 has been a huge success since launching in early-access just last month. But we got an inside scoop late last year as Antonio Gallego dropped by to talk about how the studio works with behaviour trees in Unreal Engine to enable for a more modular and designer-friendly implementation
News in Brief
Want to focus on the big story, so let’s run through some quick headlines that emerged in and around this weeks Summer Games Fest shenanigans.
Yes, Alien: Isolation 2 Has a Trailer, Stop Sharing It With Me!
Congratulations to the team at Creative Assembly on the reveal trailer at Summer Games Fest. It looks fantastic, and I look forward to hearing more about it.Internet Erupts in Excitement and Then Turns to Rage Over Crazy Taxi
Sunday’s announcement of Crazy Taxi: World Tour - the first non-mobile entry in Crazy Taxi in almost 25 years - set the any% speedrun record for ‘excitement over a game announcement followed by outcry over Generative AI usage’.Asha Sharma Says Xbox Copilot Was Scrapped Because Players Didn’t Care
In my recent ‘review’ of Xbox’s new strategy I joked that new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma was treating the whole thing like she’s a new head of state: the Prime Minister of the Republic of Xbox (sorry, XBOX). Well I hate being right but she celebrated her first 100 days in office (I mean it’s literally the opening words of the conversation) with an interview over at Bloomberg Tech 26 on her start in the job and the current strategy for the Xbox (XBOX!) empire. During which she commented on - among other things - Xbox’s Copilot project being scrapped because nobody cared.
If you listen carefully in the background you can hear someone aggressively rubbing out PS5 logos from all of the Gears of War: E-Day promotional art. It was always a platform exclusive, honest!
Digging into the UK’s New ‘AI Adoption Plan’ for the Creative Industries
This week saw the release of the latest report from the UK government about their proposals for how to grasp with AI in the creative industries. Both in how to address the reality that AI has had an impact on these sectors, and current and future implications it has for the future of our screen sectors. I’m going to give a brief summary of the report, followed by my own thoughts on the matter.
A Quick Timeline
I’ve written a lot about the UK government’s approach to AI in recent years and the proposals have ranged from the tin-eared to the corrupt. If you’re new to this and want a catch-up on where we are, here’s a quick timeline and some recommended reading from the past year or so:
December 2024: An open consultation was raised by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) in collaboration with the Department for Science Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on copyright in an age of artificial intelligence.
January 2025: I dig into this consultation in detail back in January of 2025, the proposals laid out in the consultation seem to be driven solely by the DSIT’s willingness to placate big tech, and essentially throw the UK creative sector under the bus. Allowing for all intellectual property produced in the UK to be given away for free to AI companies unless you opt-out (an impossible system in practice).
April/May 2025: The consultation closes in February 2025 and receives significantly more responses than expected. Thus delaying the government’s official response. While it’s unclear at this time how many submissions were received (we later find out it was ~11,500), it’s far more than a typical IPO public consultation. Meanwhile Peter Kyle, then the minister in charge of DSIT, was keen to push on with the original proposals though conceded that the consultation raised issues that “haven’t even featured in the debate thus so far.” As was reported at the time Kyle had been seen meeting repeatedly with big tech firms to discuss the proposals (which OpenAI felt weren’t good enough), but had failed to engage at all with creative industry heads. It really did seem like DCMS’ name was on the consultation purely as an afterthought.
