AI has a ‘symbiotic relationship’ with blockchain: CEO, Animoca Brands

The CEO of Animoca Brands, Robby Yung spoke with Cointelegraph at the Proof of Talk blockchain conference in Paris about the future of AI and blockchain in the gaming space.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a hot topic in public discord both in and outside of the emerging tech industry, after an increase in popularity of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. 

At the Proof of Talk 2023 blockchain and Web3 conference in Paris, Cointelegraph sat down with Robbie Yung, the CEO of Animoca Brands to discuss the relationship between AI, blockchain and gaming.

Yung told Cointelegraph that Animoca has been involved with AI for “a long time,” both incubating AI companies and utilizing it in game development. He said for art teams, generative AI changes the game in terms of productivity and development.

“Generative art has the potential to dramatically increase the productivity of art teams. It’s like giving farmers tractors instead of horses.”

AI has been particularly pervasive in the gaming industry. On May 29, Nvidia announced a new suite of AI tools called Nvidia ACE for Games. Among other capabilities, the tools use AI to give non-player characters (NPC), also known as background players, in games more character capabilities.  

The Animoca Brands CEO explained that AI integrations allow players to have a more interactive experience with the universe, as it takes on a “life of its own.” When the game is blockchain-based, AI integration becomes even more relevant. 

“AI has a very symbiotic relationship with what we do in blockchain. NPCs will actually become characters in a blockchain game, which means they will have transactions amongst each other.”

Yung pointed out that transactions between NPCs on a blockchain game will most likely have to use crypto for transactions. He believes:

“Crypto will become the native currency of AI.”

If AI-enhanced games are able to create active and blockchain-based NPCs that are making transactions, he said it will be equivalent to having lots of employees that don’t sleep.

According to Yung, the current limitations of AI are similar to those seen in the blockchain space – cost and power. “Like everything in tech,” he said, “it will come down quickly.”

Related: Twitter suspends memecoin-linked AI bot after Elon Musk’s ‘scam crypto’ claim

Both the AI and Web3 industries have been a major focus for regulators around the world, as the technologies become more available to mainstream users. 

When asked about the implications of regulations on the gaming and metaverse industries that use emerging tech such as AI, blockchain and cryptocurrencies he said they welcome regulations for the sake of clarity.

“Clarity is what everybody’s after… It’s about being able to have an environment that’s more predictable because that’s conducive to investment.”

He said when investors have a more clear understanding of the rules, they feel more comfortable investing versus doing so in an industry with a lot of uncertainty.

“There’s a knock-on effect,” he said. “We get reluctant to invest, our shareholders get reluctant to invest in us and so on. It’s not good for markets.”

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