Gaming News

Arc Raiders’ Design Director Claims They Don’t Use Gen AI

On Oct 30, 2025 1:02 pm, by NuclearCoffee

After a very successful beta, Arc Raiders—which launched today—is set to be the next mega-popular extraction shooter. At the time of writing, Arc Raiders boasts a concurrent player count of 150,000 with no signs of slowing down.

The astute among you may have noted an “AI-Generated Content Disclosure” on Arc Raiders’ store page, which reads, “During the development process, we may use procedural and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.”

We Don’t Use AI, Except When We Do

In an interview with PCGamesN, Embark’s design director, Virgil Watkins, said the team doesn’t use generative AI, but does use machine learning, which prompted them to self-disclose on Steam.

“Arc Raiders in no way uses generative AI whatsoever,” Watkins assures. “We use something called machine learning, or reinforcement learning, and that’s to do with the locomotion for our larger drones with multiple legs, but there’s no generative content whatsoever.”

However, Watkins admits the same text-to-speech technology present in Embark’s other game, The Finals, also appears in Arc Raiders.

“We hire and contract voice actors for it — it’s part of their contract that we use [AI] for this purpose, and that allows us to do things like our ping system, where it’s capable of saying every item name, every single location name, and compass directions. That’s how we can get that without needing to have someone come in every time we create a new item for the game,” Watkins explains.

Arc Raiders - fighting a bastion, a large four-legged robot.

That does sound a lot like using generative AI, doesn’t it? Embark may not use AI for generating visuals, which is one of the extraction shooter’s strengths, but the Steam disclosure seems well-earned after all.

In a separate interview with The Game Business, Embark’s CEO, Patrick Soderlund, was open about Arc Raiders being partially inspired by the complex interactions between AI systems.

“The compulsion loop of the game was so dependent on deep innovations within artificial intelligence, both in reinforcement learning, machine learning and other aspects. And we thought we could build a whole game around that experience,” Soderlund explained.

Arc Raiders is currently available on PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.