Square Enix Boss Says The Company Will “Be Aggressive In Applying AI” In Development And Publishing

Takashi Kiryu, president and representative director of Final Fantasy developer Square Enix, says that the company will aggressively apply artificial intelligence in both development and publishing this year.

In a New Year’s letter published on the Square Enix website, Kiryu listed AI among the company’s three focus investment fields, alongside blockchain entertainment/web 3.0 and the cloud.

Who is Takashi Kiryu? Kiryu has been with Square Enix for three years and was officially elevated to president after a shareholder meeting in June 2023. He joined Square from Dentsu Innovation Initiative, a business group exploring new tech opportunities in the metaverse and web 3.0, among other areas. His 2024 New Year’s letter is one of Kiryu’s first major communications to the public since taking over as president and the first clear indication of his ambitions for the company.

What did Kiryu specifically say about AI? In his letter, Kiryu wrote that after the release of ChatGPT, it quickly became clear that:

[T]he applicability of generative AI was by no means limited to text, and the subsequent months saw a quick succession of launches of new services and content that expanded generative AI into a variety of domains with close ties to digital entertainment, including images, video, and music. I believe that generative AI has the potential not only to reshape what we create, but also to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming.

He later elaborated:

We also intend to be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions. In the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts. In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities.

What is Square’s history with controversial tech? In January 2023, then-president Yosuke Matsuda released a New Year’s letter of his own, emphasizing the company’s plans to expand its use of blockchain and NFT technologies in gaming. That decision went over like a lead balloon with gamers around the world, but Kiryu’s work history and the mentioning of blockchain technology as one of Square’s three focus investment fields seem to indicate that the company hasn’t shifted far from Matsuda’s plans.