GDC survey puts game AI use at 40%, led by research and brainstorming

Forty percent of game-industry professionals said they use generative AI in their work, according to coverage of the latest GDC Festival of Gaming State of the Game Industry survey. Among those users, research and brainstorming was the leading application, selected by 73%, ahead of data analysis and summarisation at 62% and code generation and debugging at 56%.

The pattern suggests that adoption is concentrated in support tasks rather than finished creative output. Twenty-two percent of respondents reported using the tools for concept art or visual ideation, while 8% reported using them for production art or final game assets. Just 6% of respondents said they used generative AI to create eventual player-facing content, according to Game Developer.

Use was uneven across the business. The Verge reported that 58% of free-to-play developers and 70% of workers at mobile-only studios used generative AI. Large language models were the most common tools: the official GDC release listed ChatGPT at 74%, Google Gemini at 37% and Microsoft Copilot at 22%.

The published accounts contain some differing topline figures. GDC’s own release, based on responses from more than 2,300 industry professionals, put workplace use at 36% and research or brainstorming at 81%. It also reported that 30% of respondents at game studios used AI tools, compared with 58% among publishing, support and marketing or PR companies, and put business professionals’ use at 58%.

The 40% figure marks an increase from the 2025 GDC survey, when 36% of developers said they personally used generative-AI tools, up from 31% the year before. The official 36% figure matches the 2025 result. The previous survey also found that 64% worked at companies with an internal AI policy, compared with 51% in 2024.

Use has risen alongside sharper professional unease. The official 2026 findings said 52% viewed generative AI as having a negative effect on the industry, up from 30% in 2025 and 18% two years earlier; about 7% saw a positive effect, down from 13% a year earlier. In the 2025 survey, developers cited intellectual-property theft, energy consumption, content quality, bias, regulation and job displacement among their concerns.

The data therefore show a workforce increasingly using the technology, particularly for exploratory, analytical and coding work, while reported use for player-facing content remains low.