Todd Howard, executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, told Eurogamer that artificial intelligence can be a helpful tool for speeding iterative work in game development, but it should not be used to generate final creative assets. Howard framed AI as an aid for repetitive or time consuming tasks rather than a substitute for artists and designers. He said, “I view it as a tool. Creative intention comes from human artists, number one.” He added, “Not in generating things, but we are always working on our toolset for how we build our worlds or check things,” and stressed that “the human intention of it is what makes our stuff special.”
The comments came during an interview published on Eurogamer, where Howard walked a careful line between adopting new technical aids and protecting the creative process. The Eurogamer interview is the clearest public statement yet from Howard on where Bethesda plans to draw that line. Howard’s position sits between outright rejection of AI and full scale adoption by some firms. He compared modern tools to how Photoshop evolved over the last decade and said developers should use AI to move faster through iterations, not to hand off authorship.
That stance will matter for long running projects at Bethesda and for expectations around future releases. Howard has previously cautioned that Elder Scrolls 6 status remains a long way off, so any workflow changes could affect internal timelines and how the studio prototypes or polishes large worlds. Howard is not alone in taking a cautious approach. Some creators have described AI as useful for tedious tasks, while other industry leaders and companies are pursuing broader uses and investments. For now, Howard emphasized protecting the role of human artists as the source of creative intent.
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