Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan has weighed in on the discussion surrounding generative AI in game development, claiming that the controversial technology has a place in the industry, but gamers just aren’t aware of the art it will produce yet.
“With the amount of slop out there, we’re going to see some level of art rise to the top, and that kind of art may still be created with the same tools that created the slop,” Tan said in an interview with The Verge.
It comes as Razer continues to implement AI technology into its own hardware, following several new product reveals at CES 2026. Among them is a pair of over-ear headphones and a high-powered workstation PC meant for handling demanding AI workloads. Razer also has an open source AI developer kit aimed at coders and other business customers.
“What we do is focus on what the gamers want, what the game developers want, and we see ourselves as the link in between,” claimed Min. “And we keep both as happy as we can.”
As The Verge pointed out in the interview, a quick glance at the comments section below Razer’s own social media posts hyping up its new products reveals a backlash to its AI-heavy announcements. The replies are littered with users posting anti-AI sentiments and memes asking for Razer to stop using the technology in its products.
The use of generative AI in game development has been one of the hottest topics in the industry over the past few months. Following the reveal of Divinity at the 2025 The Game Awards, developer Larian CEO, Swen Vincke, sparked a backlash when he said the studio was using genAI in various capacities. Larian ended up having to address AI concerns in a reddit AMA in which the studio confirmed a U-turn on some aspects of its use.
Despite pushback on genAI online, the Razer CEO remains hopeful that perception will change, and that soon gamers will see true “art” start to be created with these tools.
“I would say that the question is, ‘What are we unhappy with?’, Min asked. “When I say we, I mean us as gamers. I think we’re unhappy with generative AI slop, right? Just to put it out there. And that’s something that I’m unhappy with. Like any gamer, when I play a game, I want to be engaged, I wanna be immersed, I wanna be able to be competitive. I don’t want to be served character models with extra fingers and stuff like that, or shoddily written storylines.”
“With the amount of slop out there, we’re going to see some level of art rise to the top, and that kind of art may still be created with the same tools that created the slop, but with great care, with great discernment, to be able to do something truly different,” Min continued. “The difference will come from human ingenuity, not from countless prompt mashing, so to speak.
“If we could get game developers to have the opportunity to create better, to check through typos and things like that, to create better games, I think we all want that. So I think that’s the way that we see it.”
When asked about what games the CEO of the electronics company, whose mantra is “For Gamers. By Gamers,” is playing that meet the bar of “ingenuity and creativity,” Min responded: “Oh, well, I play random stuff. If you’re talking about human ingenuity… I even play some of the Roblox games at this point in time, right?
“One hundred people dropped on an island with a circle that comes through. I mean, while I enjoy the game itself, I also appreciate the mechanics, the thought that has gone into them, and the premise that the designer has figured out. In PUBG, for example, it’s this primal instinct of humans to be the last man standing, so to speak. So it’s things like that that I appreciate, and I think it’s art.”
PUBG is a hugely popular battle royale that was crafted by a small team and led by a modder who created it due to a love of the medium and the desire for a new genre.
While we wait to find out what this art that rises to the top of the AI slop looks like, some companies are banning the use of genAI altogether. Last week, Games Workshop confirmed it had banned the use of generative AI for the production of its designs and content, a decision many Warhammer fans welcomed.
However, Games Workshop’s ban on AI is in contrast to the attitude of some entertainment companies, some of whom have gone all-in on the tech. The CEO of Genvid — the company behind choose-your-own-adventure interactive series Silent Hill Ascension — has claimed “consumers generally do not care” about generative AI, and stated that: “Gen Z loves AI slop.”
EA CEO Andrew Wilson has said AI is “the very core of our business,” and Square Enix recently implemented mass layoffs and reorganized, saying it needed to be “aggressive in applying AI.” Dead Space creator Glen Schofield also recently detailed his plans to “fix” the industry in part via the use of generative AI in game development, and former God of War dev Meghan Morgan Juinio said: “… if we don’t embrace [AI], I think we’re selling ourselves short.”
Photo by Nina Franova/Getty Images for SXSW Sydney.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN 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.
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