Homa’s AI hackathon just built 10 new AI tools in 48 hours | Pocket Gamer.biz

Generative AI has exploded in popularity this year, with the technology finally landing in more hands and in a useable way. From Roblox to Half Moon, to Unity and Scriptic, the number of games companies aiming to leverage this latest tool continues to grow.

One such company, which set itself a target to use generative AI in “all ways possible” at the start of 2023, is Homa. Aiming to make the creation process as efficient as possible, the Homa Lab platform has been empowered with new AI features, and in line with this commitment, the company has now held its first Internal Gen AI Hackathon to see what they could come up with.

10 projects were undertaken by 10 Homa teams, each having 48 hours to innovate on new projects with the aim of promoting collaboration and streamlining future creation.

Assets and ideas

The 10 generative AI tools developed in the Game Jam-esque event were voted on by all team members throughout the company, with rankings streamed in real time.

The results? A system for creating talking 3D Avatars came out on top. This AI tool was conceived to generate variable video ads with avatars via text prompts. These prompts enable different voices, languages and animations, allowing a wide range of unique ads to be made in a short amount of time.

3DGenie came in second, again using text prompts to create ready-to-use 3D game assets, saving a significant amount of development time.

Idea Generator came third, a tool using data from Homa Lab to suggest new ideas for themes and games based on current trends and successful titles.

“Generative AI has been a big priority for us at Homa this year, with our top management encouraging each of our teams to leverage its potential. But for us, it’s about more than just using already existing tools for us. We want to create them,” Homa stated in a blog post.

Earlier this year we spoke with Roblox’s Stefano Corazza on generative AI’s utility, which he believes has seen a “promising start” but is only just beginning.