The first half of 2023 has been full of developments in the AI space, with the technology becoming increasingly prevalent in the public eye and growing in popularity in the form of chatbots, art generators and more.
Back in February, Roblox revealed its vision for the future of AI on its platform, particularly regarding users of Roblox Studio; the tool offers developers across a range of skill levels control over building new environments.
Roblox experiences are created by devs using Lua scripting to combine 3D objects in tandem with the program’s universal physics system, without the use of generative AI at the time. The company believed that AI supporting convergent media would be able to simplify this process, such as generating a car from a prompt.
In the time since, generative AI has been leveraged by thousands of developers via new beta tools in Roblox Studio, speeding up the creation process. As hoped back in February, users can now generate graphics, materials, textures and code just by entering text.
Winds of change
Implementing these AI tools has led to a noteworthy shift in development, changing the game for many. A total 36 percent of beta users have already leveraged the main AI tool – the Material Generator – with more than 70 thousand images created through it so far. In fact, 50 percent more users are creating variations of materials daily than were doing so prior to the tool’s launch.
The amount of inserted code for beta users has risen by 35 percent while deleted code suggestions have fallen by 14 percent, suggesting a notable streamlining of the coding process. Code Assist has been leveraged by 41 percent of beta users.
Roblox has stated that generative AI is being used more and more each week, so it appears that the technology’s implementation has been a net positive among devs. This also matches Roblox Studios head Stefano Corazza’s foresight, when he spoke with us about the future of Roblox.
