Level 5 CEO Akihiro Hino Addresses Use of AI in Latest Presentation
After the game publisher Level 5 streamed its "Vision 2026 II Dream" presentation on Thursday, its CEO Akihiro Hino issued a statement a day later about the presentation's use of AI. He said, "We incorporated cutting-edge AI that also served as an experiment, in our earnest desire to make a phenomenal presentation. We understand this may have offended some, and we sincerely apologize.”
Hino emphasized that his company “create all elements related to the appeal and uniqueness of our titles, including the scenarios, character designs, and basic world-building, entirely by human hands.” He noted, however, that Level 5 mainly aims to use AI to convert human-made assets into digital assets, such as polygon models, to improve efficiency.
Hino said the time saved by using AI in converting human-made assets into digital assets has been used in furthering creative processes at the studio. He added that Level 5 is in a “testing and refinement phase to achieve our goal of reducing the current five-year development cycle for major titles to just two years.”
Hino ended his statement by reiterating his company used AI during the presentation to make it “striking.” He said, “We will take this as a lesson and apply it to future efforts, so please look forward to Level 5's next presentation.”
The nearly one-hour-long "Level 5 Vision 2026 II Dream" presentation showcased the video game titles Yōkai Watch 2: Haunted Domain, Pufflings: Journey Through a Fantasy World, DECAPOLICE, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl – Gold (The Snack World: Trejarers), HOLY HORROR MANSION, Inazuma Eleven: Cross, Inazuma Eleven Rekka no Kakumei (Revolution of Fire), and Professor Layton and the Curious Village (Layton Kyōju to Fushigi na Machi). The company presented a short making-of video for Professor Layton and the Curious Village and previewed its Tokyo Game Show 2026 booth.
The full presentation is available on the Level 5 YouTube channel with English and Simplified Chinese subtitles:
Sources: Akihiro Hino's X/Twitter account, Level 5's YouTube channel, Level 5's website
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.