At Capcom, AI agents have been deployed to streamline playtesting for new video game development so that engineers and artists can focus less on debugging and more on creating gaming worlds. Virgin, meanwhile, has unveiled a new AI-enabled virtual assistant called Rovey that can help guests book their trips, offer proactive itinerary recommendations, and answer logistic questions.<\/p>\n
As games grow bigger, Capcom is turning to AI<\/p>\n
Capcom\u2019s AI agents are already operating for over 30,000 hours per month and were built to inspect and pressure-test around half a dozen video game titles before they\u2019re publicly released. \u201cGame teams have become very large, and as these games grow in size and complexity, these game teams find themselves working on very high friction, difficult problems,\u201d says Jack Buser, director of games for Google Cloud.<\/p>\n
As these AI agents play through the game, they analyze a checklist of problems that could occur along the way: is the graphics quality failing? Did a crash occur that made the game unplayable? Is there a sense of discomfort as characters move across the field of play? The AI agents aren\u2019t just autonomously detecting and reporting these issues, Capcom says. They are also making suggestions on how to fix them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current game world is as big as one city,\u201d says Kazuki Abe, Capcom\u2019s technical director and head of AI solutions and platform, in an interview conducted with a translator. \u201cThere are thousands of characters and tens of thousands of objects, like chairs and desks.\u201d All these variabilities make it difficult for humans to check everything, Abe adds.<\/p>\n
For example, visual inspection agents were designed to study when a character changes the equipment they are holding. This simple gesture alone can take 5,280 hours for human playtesters to monitor. AI now screens and flags bugs within those visuals, completing the verification process in about 72 hours. Other agents predict where system issues could occur during the development process. Yet another can assist newer employees, who can ask an AI agent how a veteran engineer would have handled a similar debugging problem in the past.<\/p>\n
Over the years, the $200 billion gaming industry has developed more realistic art and graphics and more complex gameplay, resulting in longer and more expensive development cycles for game makers like Capcom. The industry is also facing cyclical challenges. Revenue growth has slowed<\/a> as consumers spend more time on mobile games. The industry has been beset with layoffs<\/a>, partly due to consolidation.<\/p>\n Shinichi Inoue, Capcom\u2019s VP of engineering, says agentic AI will help the company train future game designers, artists, and game programmers, a group of employees that the company calls \u201ccreators.\u201d \u201cWe are using AI to widen the potential of the creators,\u201d Inoue says through a translator. \u201cWe are not intending to lower the workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n Virgin\u2019s AI \u201ccrew member\u201d aims to shorten sales cycle<\/p>\n Virgin\u2019s Rovey, meanwhile, is the cruise company\u2019s first-ever, external-facing AI tool. Booking a cruise, especially for travelers who haven\u2019t done so before, is a complex process involving navigating various trip itineraries, booking restaurant and entertainment reservations, and off-boat excursions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to use AI to effectively expedite that process,\u201d says Nathan Rosenberg, Virgin\u2019s chief brand and marketing officer, who says he will closely monitor the satisfaction scores for Rovey, as well as how it influences a guest\u2019s likelihood to recommend Virgin to family and friends.<\/p>\n Rovey\u2019s use case emerged from a small working group of AI \u201cchampions,\u201d a cross-functional team that looks at how the crew and sales teams perform their jobs and explores new ways to infuse AI into those workflows. The commercial and marketing teams take a fairly active lead in developing Virgin\u2019s AI playbook.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you think about most traditional businesses, they\u2019ll tell you first about what the IT team is doing with vendors, or what the IT team is doing to reduce costs,\u201d says Virgin Voyages CEO Nirmal Saverimuttu. \u201cThe front door to AI for us is our growth and marketing teams.\u201d<\/p>\n Rovey was thus developed to support both productivity gains and revenue generation. On the ship, any questions Rovey can answer will lessen the burden for the customer service-focused team members. But Rovey is also designed to help speed up conversation. It typically takes Virgin about six to eight weeks to convert a first-time cruise customer. With Rovey, Saverimuttu hopes to reduce that sales cycle to \u201ctwo to three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n John Kell<\/p>\n Send thoughts or suggestions to\u00a0CIO Intelligence here<\/a>.<\/p>\n NEWS PACKETS<\/p>\n Apple CEO Tim Cook steps down. After 15 years of leading the electronics giant, Apple announced<\/a> that Cook would step down and be succeeded by longtime hardware giant chief John Ternus<\/a> in September. Cook has frequently been featured on Fortune\u2019s Most Powerful People<\/a> list and has won praise for driving Apple\u2019s soaring market cap due to explosive sales of the iPhone and for unveiling hit products like the Apple Watch and Apple\u2019s wireless AirPods. And yet, the company has faced some criticism in recent years for making almost no notable advancements when it comes to generative AI. That\u2019s a problem that Ternus will need to address<\/a>.<\/p>\n Three top executives quit OpenAI in a single day. Kevin Weil, who led the ChatGPT maker\u2019s scientific research arm, announced<\/a> on Friday that he would be leaving the company as his division was being decentralized into other teams. On the same day, Bill Peebles, who led OpenAI\u2019s shuttered video app Sora, and Srinivas Narayanan, CTO of B2B Applications at OpenAI, also announced their departures<\/a>. Bloomberg reports<\/a> that Weil, who previously steered product development teams at Instagram and Twitter before joining OpenAI two years ago, exited because the AI startup is angling to refocus and unify its products. Prism, a scientific workspace program that Weil\u2019s team developed, will become part of the Codex team.<\/p>\n CEOs are getting louder on AI\u2019s job impact. Some of the nation\u2019s most powerful executives are more frequently opining on how AI will change the future of work, including comments from Verizon CEO Dan Schulman, who told<\/a> the Wall Street Journal that difficult times were ahead \u201cand everyone knows it.\u201d The telecommunications giant set aside $20 million in a career-transition and retraining fund for AI as Verizon began to trim 13,000 jobs last year. Jensen Huang, the CEO of AI chipmaking giant Nvidia, meanwhile remains (somewhat) more bullish, speculating that AI agents will act more like managers than job killers. \u201cYour [AI] agents are harassing you, micromanaging you, and you\u2019re busier than ever,\u201d Huang said during a recent panel discussion<\/a>. And last week, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk called on the federal government to issue checks<\/a> as the best way to deal with AI-related unemployment.<\/p>\n Anthropic scores $5 billion from Amazon; Mythos generates more buzz. Amazon announced it is investing an additional $5 billion<\/a> into Anthropic and may put in $20 billion more further down the line, in a deal that also includes the tech giant providing the Claude maker with chips that can reach about 5 gigawatts of power. This comes as Anthropic\u2019s Mythos, the company\u2019s most advanced and still restricted AI model, has banking executives and regulators racing to assess its cybersecurity risks. \u201cOn Mythos, look, it\u2019s a serious issue,\u201d Barclays CEO C. S. Venkatakrishnan told<\/a> Reuters. Top executives from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and other U.S. banks have also told investors<\/a> they are monitoring Mythos\u2019 risks. And the National Security Agency is reportedly using Mythos Preview<\/a>, despite Anthropic being deemed a \u201csupply chain risk\u201d in its spat with the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n ADOPTION CURVE<\/p>\n Very few board members are fluent in AI. A mere 23% of governance respondents said their board members had a high level of fluency in AI, while 51% said their basic understanding was \u201cmoderate\u201d and 23% said there was low exposure, according to corporate disclosure data and a survey<\/a> of 130 executives, largely from U.S. public companies, conducted by the nonprofit think tank the Conference Board.<\/p>\n Most of the respondents reported that their boards were building fluency through regular board or committee discussions (67%), internal briefings (49%), and advice from external experts (42%). But far fewer said they were becoming more fluent through more structured approaches including scenario planning or director education courses.<\/p>\n \u201cLots of independent board directors aren\u2019t necessarily coming from a background that includes generative AI and AI models, and therefore, are still in the early stages of building that fluency,\u201d Andrew Jones, a principal researcher at the Conference Board, tells Fortune. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to integrate AI much more into the cadence of the board by getting briefings, but we aren\u2019t seeing any major redesign of the board architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n But perhaps they should accelerate the pace of learning, as the Conference Board notes that the share of large-cap public companies listing AI as a material risk has soared from 12% in 2023 to 83% last year. \u201cClearly, AI oversight shouldn’t just be left to the CTO or the CIO,\u201d says Jones. \u201cIt\u2019s a shared and collective responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Courtesy of the Conference Board<\/p>\n JOBS RADAR<\/p>\n Hiring:<\/p>\n – W.S. Darley & Co is seeking a chief information\/technology officer<\/a>, based in Itasca, Illinois. Posted salary range: $200K-$300K\/year.<\/p>\n – Mead & Hunt is seeking a CTO<\/a>, based in Madison, Wisconsin. Posted salary range: $270K-$330K\/year.<\/p>\n – Logos Space is seeking a head of IT<\/a>, based in San Diego. Posted salary range: $250K-$310K\/year.<\/p>\n – Institute on Aging is seeking a CTO<\/a>, based in San Francisco. Posted salary range: $295K-$325K\/year.<\/p>\n Hired:<\/p>\n – Alight appointed<\/a> Naveen Baweja as CTO, effective April 29, reporting to CEO Rohit Verma and overseeing the human resources software provider\u2019s technology organization and investments in data and AI. Most recently, Baweja served as VP of technology at entertainment giant Disney. He also\u00a0 previously held leadership roles at CNA Insurance and McKinsey.<\/p>\n – CBIZ promoted<\/a> Peter Scavuzzo to SVP and chief information and technology officer, succeeding CIO John Fleischer, who retired after 12 years at the accounting firm. Scavuzzo joined CBIZ in 2024 following its acquisition of Marcum LLP, where he served as chief information and digital officer and CEO of Marcum Technology.<\/p>\n – First Commonwealth Financial announced<\/a> the appointment of Ryan L. Gorney as CIO, effective April\u00a0 27. Gorney will oversee the Pennsylvania bank\u2019s IT, digital strategy, operations, and enterprise transformation initiatives. He previously served as CIO at Primis Bank and CTO at Panacea Financial. He also held senior leadership roles at KeyBank, Ernst & Young, and Accenture.<\/p>\n – Novus named<\/a> Olivier Pepin as the media agency\u2019s first-ever CTO, where he will lead the company\u2019s technology, AI, and data engineering. Most recently, Pepin served as chief architect at marketing agency MRM, where he led AI, digital commerce, and marketing technology solutions for clients including General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, and Nestl\u00e9.<\/p>\n – Cross Country Healthcare appointed<\/a> Chris Tyrell as CIO, where he will lead the healthcare staffing and recruitment company\u2019s enterprise technology investment and execution in areas including AI and automation. Tyrell previously served as CTO at warehouse staffing company Eclipse Advantage.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Fig-A-and-B.jpg\"\/)
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