October 2025, Futurism published an article citing a Business Insider investigation: Electronic Arts (EA), aiming to improve development efficiency, extensively embedded generative AI into art assets, level design and quality assurance processes, but the results did not match management's expected "faster and cheaper" outcome.
Multiple EA employees and outsourced contractors told the report that AI‑generated textures, character concept art and scene presets frequently contain detailed errors—abnormal material reflections, imbalanced character proportions, repeating textures or obvious seams. Materials that were expected to serve as "drafts" instead increased downstream art work: designers must spend substantial time filtering, correcting or discarding AI outputs.
The report also notes that QA (quality assurance) was not spared: automated testing tools and AI‑assisted bug‑detection systems produced many false positives, forcing testing teams to repeatedly verify issue origins and thereby prolonging pre‑release iteration cycles. One interviewed employee commented: "We spent a lot of time training and supervising the AI, and the work ultimately became overseeing and fixing the AI."
In addition, legal and compliance problems emerged as a nontrivial side effect. Some AI‑generated assets were found to bear high similarity to existing works or known visual elements, raising concerns about copyright and licensing risks. Outsourcing firms and contract artists have faced increased scrutiny, which has affected team morale.
EA management had promoted using AI tools as an "efficiency amplifier" in internal meetings, but employees reported that in practice "the tools are neither omnipotent nor mature," requiring more domain experts to tune models and perform post‑processing. Contractors complained that contract terms were not updated in time, leaving compensation and liability for AI output quality ambiguous.
Anonymous sources cited by Futurism also mentioned cultural issues: some creative staff feel insufficiently respected and worry that automation could be used as a pretext for layoffs; engineering and art teams have incurred higher internal communication costs to handle disordered AI outputs.
EA has not issued a comprehensive response to all allegations, but the company has said in various forums that it is adjusting its AI deployment strategy, emphasizing that AI should be treated as an "assistive tool," and has pledged to strengthen internal review and compliance processes. The report warns the industry that directly applying generative AI to complex creative and technical workflows can produce unexpected quality, legal and labor costs.
The lesson for the games industry is clear: the October 2025 experiment shows that while AI can spark creativity and offer efficiency potential in entertainment content production, artistic judgment, copyright compliance and final user experience still require substantial human expertise and iterative management.