Roblox’s chief scientist, Morgan McGuire, envisions a future where games can be created using voice commands. The company uses AI for game development, content moderation, and real-time language translation to enhance user experience and support its global community.
Creating digital games may soon be as simple as speaking to an AI engine without needing coding skills.
In a recent TechFirst podcast, Morgan McGuire, chief scientist at Roblox, shared this vision: Game development could soon be fully accomplished through voice commands.
He stated, “I think we’ll get to the point where in the future you could if you wanted, make a game entirely with voice. So by talking to the system, working with it over the course of an hour. And it’s just up-leveling what you’re doing. Instead of typing every single thing using your mouse, we can have AI take your intent and produce it for you.”
Roblox’s Growing Influence in the Gaming World
Roblox is already a dominant force in the gaming world, boasting over 300 million monthly users and 80 million daily active players. These numbers surpass other major platforms like Steam and PlayStation and are five times greater than Minecraft’s. On average, players spend a staggering six billion hours a month on Roblox, more than double the time spent on Disney+.
“Roblox likely has more monthly users than the entire AAA gaming ecosystem combined,” says venture capitalist Matthew Ball.
However, this success brings its own set of demands. Due to its large youth user base, Roblox needs to enhance safety and moderation controls. It also requires continuous development of new games and experiences to keep users engaged. With many new players joining from outside its traditional markets in the U.S. and Canada, there is a growing need for improved cross-cultural communication. Additionally, there is a demand for increasingly sophisticated images and objects for gameplay.
Roblox Working on Safety & Moderation
To manage these growing demands, Roblox is on a mission to use AI to transform the way games are made and played.
Moderation is a critical area where AI is making a significant impact. With over 50,000 text messages sent per second in 45 different languages, monitoring this volume manually is impractical. In 2023, Roblox reported over 13,000 instances of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, highlighting the need for effective moderation.
McGuire explains, “We deploy when we hit superhuman levels,” he told me. “So we don’t deploy when we see 80% of human [performance], but there’s a cost savings. We actually target saying, is this the best way to do it? And when it is, we’ll switch over.”
According to a recent shareholder letter, this AI-driven moderation saved Roblox millions of dollars in 2024 and is expected to continue yielding cost savings as the platform grows.
Roblox Simplifying 3D Game Development with AI.
AI is also set for game development on Roblox.
“The content is why people are there, right?” says McGuire. “That amazing content, Roblox produces zero of it. So part of our community, and hopefully 100% of our community, creates content someday. It’s a user-generated content platform.”
“They’re the easiest 3D generation tools to learn, but it’s still 3D generation,” McGuire noted. “You still have to know a lot about 3D modeling and programming. It doesn’t matter that we have the friendliest programming language on earth. It’s still programming, right?”
To address this, Roblox is exploring AI-driven methods to help users build tools and avatars using conversational commands, making game development more accessible and intuitive.
Roblox Will Use AI in Real-Time Voice Translation
AI is also enhancing communication on the platform.
Now, Roblox employs AI to monitor 100% of real-time voice and chat communications on the platform in each of those 45 languages while being sensitive to nuance and context.
“Ultimately, we want to do voice translation so you can speak to people in different languages, McGuire says. “We want to ultimately do voice fonts … so basically voice role-playing kind of transitions. So I’m speaking in my voice, but you’re hearing a dragon. So it fits my character, right?”
Eventually, the goal is to create entirely new game experiences only through our voices, as effortlessly as we currently use generative AI to make images or obtain answers from ChatGPT.
The Future of AI
As Roblox continues to integrate AI, the future of gaming on the platform looks set to become more innovative and accessible, paving the way for a new era of game development.
Co-founder and Chief growth officer