Mojang Won’t Use Generative AI, Minecraft Is ‘About Creativity and Creating’

Minecraft developer Mojang has no intention of incorporating generative artificial intelligence into its game development process.

The ever-increasing creep of generative AI into game development makes itself evident by the day, whether it’s Activision admitting to using generative AI art in Call of Duty: Black Op 6, or Microsoft building Muse, an AI designed to “generate game ideas.”

But, by the sound of it, Mojang has no plans of taking advantage of its parent company’s new technology, much preferring the human touch that resulted in Minecraft becoming the biggest-selling game of all time with an incredible 300 million sales.

“Here for us, just like Minecraft is about creativity and creating,” stated Minecraft Vanilla game director Agnes Larsson during a recent event attended by IGN, “I think it’s important that it makes us feel happy to create as humans. That’s a purpose, [it] makes life look beautiful. So for us, we really want it to be our teams that make our games.”

Ingela Garneij, executive producer of Minecraft Vanilla, expanded on this sentiment: “For me, it’s the thinking outside of the box part. This specific touch of: what is Minecraft? How does it look? That extra quality is really tricky to create through AI. We even try to have remote teams sometimes and guide them in building things for us, which has never worked, because you have to be here working together face-to-face.

“I mean creativity is… you need to meet like this as a person, as a human to really truly understand the values and principles and the ecosystem, the lore, everything. It’s so massive Minecraft, it’s a planet, it’s massive.”

The humans making Minecraft continue to build on its record-breaking foundations. The newly revealed graphics update, titled Vibrant Visuals, is due out in the near future, and Mojang continues to refuse to make Minecraft free-to-play. This philosophy of improving and expanding the original game also goes hand-in-hand with Mojang’s desire to not make a “Minecraft 2.” It may be 16 years old now, but there’s truly no sign of Minecraft slowing down, and no sign of generative AI finding its way into the Nether.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editorial Producer who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.