Square Enix Wants Generative AI To Do 70% of QA Testing by End of 2027

By Elijah Gonzalez | November 6, 2025 | 10:20am

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Square Enix Wants Generative AI To Do 70% of QA Testing by End of 2027

Tired of headlines about AI yet? Unfortunately, here’s another one: in Square Enix’s latest Business Plan report, the company committed to a goal of automating 70% of its QA and debugging tasks in game development by the end of 2027.

To do this, the company is initiating joint research with the Matsuo Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, with the purpose of “improving efficiency of game development processes through AI technologies.” The joint research team is made up of more than 10 members, including researchers from the Matsuo-Iwasawa Laboratory UTokyo and engineers from Square Enix.

Beyond this, Square also held a company-wide business idea contest under the theme of AI, with several ideas from the competition currently being developed and promoted internally. This all falls under the company’s broader goal of “promoting AI utilization in Japan.”

Square Enix has previously had a bit of an awkward up-and-down trajectory with AI. At the beginning of 2024, the company’s president, Takashi Kiryu, said he wanted the company to be “aggressive in applying AI.” Then, a few months later, he walked this back, saying that the company had decided to use AI-related tools “only after being properly examined.” He also said the technology would only be applied to “areas unrelated to creativity.”

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Square Enix has been quick to hop on tech fads, releasing a maligned NFT game in 2023, for instance. However, despite its internal use of AI, Square and several other companies recently issued a cease and desist order against OpenAI’s Sora 2 for allegedly stealing their work to train this model without their consent. Asking them to stop stealing is certainly justified, but it squares somewhat awkwardly with the company’s internal endorsement of the tech.

Square Enix doubling down on AI will justifiably set off alarm bells for many in the industry. While the process of debugging and QA testing has frequently been looked down upon, it’s an important step of the creative process that allows feedback to reach developers. Beyond this, QA positions have long acted as a gateway into both game development and software development more broadly, with many getting their start here before moving to other positions.

A recent survey found that 87% of video game developers are using AI in some form. Meanwhile, many companies that have already invested heavily in technology have encountered problems. A report by Business Insider found that many employees at EA had negative things to say about using generative AI for development, and that it had resulted in more work for them by generating bad code. Additionally, a QA tester at EA said that he suspected AI was the reason he and 100 of his coworkers were laid off from Respawn Entertainment. In a field already struggling with mass layoffs, it seems that the onset of AI is only going to accelerate that trend.