Tomb Raider Chronicles - EMBRACER CEO PHIL ROGERS HIGHLIGHTS AI AS A CATALYST FOR CREATIVITY AT AGM

At its Annual General Meeting, Embracer Group CEO Phil Rogers outlined how the company is accelerating its adoption of AI tools to transform game development pipelines, with major franchises such as Tomb Raider set to benefit. Rogers emphasised that AI is already reshaping workflows across animation, engineering, asset creation and narrative design, cutting production times from weeks to hours while freeing creators to focus on innovation.

Framing AI as a co-pilot rather than a replacement, he stressed Embracer's commitment to a strong ethical framework, pledging transparency, creator partnerships and protection for artists and writers. Rogers said AI will act as a catalyst for efficiency and creativity, enabling studios to push boundaries while strengthening core IP such as Tomb Raider, Lord of the Rings and Metro.

"Our philosophy is simple and direct, our teams own the creative and final product, and AI is a force-multiplier to empower our people to get there faster and enable more innovation. This isn't a theoretical future, it's happening now and the results are quite compelling. Many of our studios have been experimenting with AI in the past couple of years and are now starting to really leverage it to eliminate bottlenecks and empower our teams. We're beginning to see measurable productivity."

"Some examples, we think about AI animation and the recent advancements from NVIDIA are producing in-game results indisputable from traditional motion capture, combining great actors with human hand authoring and these animation tools reduces dependencies and production time for gameplay and cinematic animation. We're seeing a seven-day mo-cap shoot cut in half."

"Engineering Assistance. Programmers leverage modern tools as real-time code assistance, analysing output, helping fix or track down crashes or build errors, all of which optimises engineering time to create versus repair time, accelerating development. Imagine nightly builds repaired before the team is even awake.

"On asset creation, if we think about 2D to 3D conversion, newest tools can take a concept artist's 2D rendering into a game-ready 3D model, reducing time from days to hours, if not minutes. Of course there is still the tuning that's required for the asset, tuning by human hand, but again this empowers artists to focus on that 30 percent that makes the creative different versus the 70 percent on getting the basic sculpt created. I think of it as supercharging our teams, giving them more time and power to add their unique authorship."

"On the design side, let's think about AI voice. Our narrative team can now hear temporary voices in-game in minutes, a process that used to take days. This allows for rapid iteration and better early stage creative decisions."

"These are just examples, we can talk about AI production, data analysis in areas like QA, but the overall point is that these are important incremental changes. We've seen create acceleration turning days, weeks of preparation time to minutes, hours. It represents a fundamental shift in our operational efficiency. But really, we are on step one. I think of it as becoming experts in using AI to empower our people. It's like using electrical or power tools you might use at home, reducing repetitive tasks and that 70 percent lift to make room for step two."

"And step two is innovation. Right now in our industry creators have never mattered more, and we have great creators in our business. By having people powered up thanks to AI tools, creators get more time back to push boundaries, to find the fun."

"Now we are keenly aware that this new world of opportunity comes with challenges. We see the headlines and we hear the concern from players and developers alike, but we believe the greatest risk is not in using AI, but in using it without a strong, ethical framework. Players aren't longing for generic, soulless side-quests or synthetic AI voices, developers want creative freedom to innovate and experiment, and reduce iteration time so they can make more content."

"Artists, actors, writers need protection from plagiarism. Intellectual properties need to be nurtured, and respected. This is why our core principle is to empower and never replace. For us, ethics and good business are one and the same, they really do go hand in hand. Our position is clear, human authorship is final, our developers will always have the final creative control and authorship, after all AI is a co-pilot, it is not the pilot."

"Transparency is mandatory, we're committed to being transparent with players about how and where we use AI in our dev process, and partnership is the goal. We will seek creator-approved partnerships to secure the talent that brings our worlds alive. To enforce this, our company is implementing strict governance with controls, audit logs, workflow approvals for generative AI. This isn't just a policy, it's a promise to our creators and to our players."

"Generative AI is not about cutting corners, it's about elevating our craft. To conclude, by strategically integrating AI, we're not just building better games, we're building a more agile, a more innovative and ultimately more valuable company. I believe a company where creativity is amplified, not automated, securing our position as a leader in the next generation of entertainment."

"That takes us to the longer term, a truly IP-first company centred around our best studios and franchises in a structure enabling focus and operational discipline. This involves centring around our core IP, and core studios, many you see here, and planning for the long term. It means building business around IPs such as Lord of the Rings, Tomb Raider, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Metro, Remnant, and one or two handfuls of core IPs. Now to achieve this fully will take time, but as I said we will continue to lay the foundation this year and next."