Xbox Employee Says Gaming Leaders Fear Admitting AI Use

An Xbox business strategy manager says Microsoft gaming staff are already using AI and argued that industry leaders are reluctant to discuss it publicly, but the comments are his own and are not an official Microsoft or Xbox announcement.

Brandon Stirrup, identified by Windows Central and GamesRadar+ as a senior business strategy manager at Microsoft, posted a series of personal comments after experimenting with an AI-assisted game project over a weekend.

Stirrup wrote that gaming leaders are “afraid to talk about AI” because of negative audience sentiment, adding: “Users want the truth. We’re using AI.” He separately claimed that hundreds of Xbox employees use AI, though no public Microsoft data was provided to substantiate that number or explain how the technology is being used.

The comments do not define Xbox policy

Stirrup also argued that game developers who reject AI should not be “in the business of being a business,” and said his simple project took roughly three hours of active work despite his lack of game-development experience. Those statements represent one employee’s opinion; they do not establish a company-wide development mandate, disclose which Xbox projects use generative AI or show that AI can replace the work involved in shipping a commercial game.

Microsoft recently formalized Xbox Labs as an emerging-technology experimentation group, with AI among the areas it plans to explore. That official initiative provides broader context, but it does not turn Stirrup’s social-media posts into a corporate statement.

What level of transparency should game companies provide when AI tools are used during development?