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Ben Ackland is the Co-Founder and Tech Lead at Meaning Machine, a creatively-driven game tech start-up unlocking all-new gameplay experiences through generative AI. With 20 years of experience in innovative software development, Ben specializes in creating deep, meaningful NPC interactions through Meaning Machine's proprietary Game Conscious™ technology - empowering both developers and creatives to explore bold new storytelling possibilities, while respecting privacy and enhancing accessibility.

Scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur. Areej is the Founder and Director of Alfaisal's AI Center, a Center of Excellence for AI research, teaching, theory, and practice. She joined Alfaisal University in 2020 after serving as the Executive Director of IP Enablement in the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property, where she spearheaded the national network of technology and innovation support centers (TISCs). Prior to this, she was Principal Investigator at the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) within the Center for Complex Engineering Systems at KACST and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is currently a Research Affiliate with MIT's Media Lab and the Director of the Masters in Applied AI (MAI) in the College of Engineering and Advanced Computing at Alfaisal Computing, with a teaching focus on Human-Centric AI in Extended Reality and Generative AI for Creativity and the Arts. She held a series of leadership positions of increasing responsibility in various academic and research institutions within the Kingdom, particularly in the scope of research and development. Areej holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, with a Postdoc from (MIT)'s School of Engineering and received her MSc degree in Computer Graphics and Multimedia from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at George Washington University. With over 15 years in research and development, she has led humanistic co-design programs across the public, private, and non-profit sectors and has been an industry champion for diversity and inclusion. She is involved in several professional and civic organizations, including the Advisory Board of the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC) for women and the national IEEE Women in Engineering Affinity Group in Saudi Arabia and serves on the jury for the pre-collegiate National Olympiad for STEM; and was formerly the founder and president of the chartered chapter of the Arab Women in Computing for Saudi Arabia. Areej's research experience includes extended reality (XR), AI in health, neurotechnology and brain-computer interfaces (BCI). Her current work focuses on human-centric AI and the impact of AI-generated art on defining art, the dynamic between artists and their tools, the process of digital curation, and the question of whether AI systems can match human creativity. In her research leaders roles, director of the AI Center and HCI Lab at Alfaisal University, her research strategies focus on driving organizational and societal transformation by strengthening the role of science and promoting innovation through strategic initiatives, academic alliances, and governance processes.

Ignacio Amaya leads AI initiatives at Rovio, working on machine learning and generative AI for games, advertising, and user acquisition. He has a background in data science and data engineering and focuses on building AI solutions that deliver real business impact.

With over 30 years of experience, Reed Berkowitz has designed award-winning interactive experiences for global entertainment leaders including Universal Studios, Paramount, Cartoon Network, and Sanrio. A pioneer in the field, he created the first Alternate Reality Game (ARG) and continues to innovate across immersive theater and large-scale art installations. For the past four years, he has been at the forefront of generative AI and gaming, contributing to landmark projects like Latitude's AI Dungeon and consulting for a16z Speedrun recipients. His work extends into serious gaming and cross-disciplinary simulations developed in association with organizations such as the CDC and the Qualcomm Institute. A recognized expert on the intersection of play and technology, his insights have been featured by The Washington Post, The New Yorker Radio Hour, NPR, and PBS.

Jack brings over 25 years of game industry experience to his current role as Global Director for Games, Strategic Industries, Google Cloud. He has built numerous game platforms at Google and PlayStation, bringing joy and excitement to millions of players all over the planet. Most recently, Jack built the Ecosystem for Living Games at Google Cloud, bringing together live service technology with generative AI to shape the future of games. Prior to that, he spent five years creating Stadia from the ground up, securing partnerships with the world's leading game publishers and developers. Before joining Google, Jack spent nearly a decade at PlayStation, building a variety of platforms including PlayStation Now, PlayStation Home, and PlayStation Plus. In his free time, he enjoys playing games on his extensive collection of game consoles and computers.

Current Position: Team Lead of the Internal Ongoing Project Tool Group at Tencent's Photon Creative Center, member of the Game Expert Group, and Technical Review Committee Member. Expertise: Over 10 years of experience in the gaming industry, specializing in game server technology, User-Generated Content (UGC) technology, and the application of Generative AI technology in game development. Current Work Focus: Exploring how AI technologies can enhance and optimize game development workflows.

Ethan Hu earned his Ph.D. in CG and AI from MIT. He is the CEO of Meshy—a generative AI tool that creates fully textured 3D models from images or text in under a minute. According to SimilarWeb and a16z's survey of 650 game developers, Meshy is the No. 1 3D GenAI tool for game developers. Ethan is based in Silicon Valley, and his favorite animal is the llama.

Tom is a game designer whose work focuses on turning speech and language into gameplay mechanics. He co-founded Meaning Machine in 2022 - a game and technology studio which explores the creative potential of author-directed AI characters & quests. In his role as Creative Director, he oversees the development of a range of internal and partner projects that all use generative AI in their core mechanics. Dead Meat, "the interrogation game where you can ask anything", is the studio's debut.

Evgeny Makarov has been a Developer Technology Engineer at NVIDIA since 2006, with a long history of helping studios improve visuals and performance in PC games. Recently, he has expanded his technical focus to include Generative AI, specifically working on the first integrations of Large Language Models (LLMs) for real-time, local inference in gaming environments.

Dr. Andy Michel leads Game AI product management at Qualcomm, bringing on‑device generative AI to Snapdragon. His career spans engineering, research, and product leadership, including mission‑critical systems in aerospace, real‑time simulation, and supercomputing. Today his work focuses on GenAI inference at the edge to power immersive gaming experiences. He's actively exploring architectures for autonomous agents and AI safety in interactive systems.

Ross O’Dwyer is a software engineer and technical leader at Meta. He brings a career spanning game middleware, real-time physics, VR platform engineering, and large-scale developer ecosystems. Ross spent 14 years at Havok leading Developer Relations and Professional Services, partnering with studios worldwide and helping advance ragdoll and physics-driven character technology across the industry. He later joined Oculus in 2014, where he built the DevRel Engineering function and went on to lead major portions of the Rift and Quest software stack through multiple product launches. More recently he returned to an IC role to lead Generative AI technologies for Meta's Horizon platform.

Irena Pereira is a game industry veteran with over 25 years of experience building live service games and production pipelines across PC, console, and mobile. As Founder and CEO of Infinite Realms and Unleashed Games, she leads teams applying generative AI to real-world game production as a creator-first force multiplier—speeding development while maintaining authorship, creative intent, and player trust.

Her work centers on ethical, canon-faithful uses of GenAI to support worldbuilding, live operations, and scalable content creation without replacing human creativity or eroding creative voice. Irena speaks internationally on responsible AI adoption in games, focusing on practical production workflows, governance models, and how small teams can build ambitious worlds with clarity, cohesion, and care.

Thomas is a Technical Architect at Ubisoft, specializing in large-scale data engineering, analytics, and AI-driven developer tools. Over the past several years, Thomas has architected the implementation of core data and DevOps infrastructure that powers insights and decision-making across Ubisoft's worldwide studios. Most recently, Thomas was the technical lead on DocGPT—Ubisoft's secure, in-house AI knowledge assistant—bringing generative AI to the heart of the studio's development workflows. From integrating scattered sources like Jira, Confluence, Perforce, and playtest reviews, to deploying highly secure, domain-aware retrieval pipelines, Thomas helped make knowledge more accessible for thousands of game developers every day. Prior to this, Thomas worked on Ubisoft's global analytics and machine learning platform, delivering scalable event-driven architectures and deploying AI-powered features directly inside game engines. A strong advocate of combining DevOps discipline with machine learning and data engineering best practices, Thomas leverages tools like Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Spark, and Databricks to make scalable, production-grade solutions a reality. Thomas holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from IRRCyN (Nantes) and an engineering degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Mines de Nantes.

Eric “Purz” Purcell is a creative technologist exploring the intersection of generative AI, art, and open-source tools. Working within the ComfyUI ecosystem, he focuses on building, testing, and teaching creative workflows that help artists and developers experiment with new forms of generative media. His work centers on making powerful tools approachable—and fun to explore.

Shafik Quoraishee is a Senior Games Machine Learning Engineer at The New York Times, where he works on flagship games including Wordle, Connections, Crosswords, and Strands. With a background in computer vision and applied AI, he builds tools and production systems that translate research ideas into real, shipped features. He has over 11 years of experience as an Android developer and led MakerWeek 2023 at The New York Times, where he spearheaded the development of an experimental handwriting recognition system for the NYT Crossword Android app. That work spanned the full pipeline, including custom handwriting input (SketchBox), preprocessing varied writing styles, training a convolutional neural network, and deploying it with TensorFlow Lite. Shafik is a frequent speaker at industry conferences such as GDC's AI Summit, Eng X engineering summits, and Droidcon NYC, where he presents on topics including handwriting recognition, generative AI in games, GANs, and the relationship between AI and game theory. He also writes about machine learning and experimental game AI, with published work on platforms such as Medium and Nieman Lab.

Alexis Rolland is a seasoned technology leader with over 15 years of experience at the intersection of artificial intelligence, game development, and data analytics. As the Director of Ubisoft La Forge in China, he spearheads innovative R&D initiatives that bridge academic research and game development, driving technical prototyping and the adoption of cutting-edge AI solutions. Alexis began his career as a consultant at IBM before transitioning to the gaming industry, where he has played a pivotal role in shaping Ubisoft's AI and data strategy. Over his 13-year tenure at Ubisoft, he has held multiple leadership roles, including Director of Ubisoft China AI & Data Lab, where he managed a diverse team of data scientists, engineers, and product managers to enhance analytics, machine learning, and AI-driven innovation across Ubisoft's projects. A self-taught programmer with a passion for development, Alexis has contributed to numerous groundbreaking AI initiatives, such as Ubisoft's internal generative AI platform, Ghostwriter for narrative dialogue generation, and ZooBuilder, a tool for creating 3D animations from videos. His expertise spans reinforcement learning, computer vision, and generative AI, with his work showcased at major industry events like SIGGRAPH Asia.

Sergey Rudenko is a Principal Technologist in the Amazon Luna division, pioneering the use of real-time generative AI in interactive entertainment. He prototypes GenAI-native games and platform features, with a focus on real-time AI characters, game environment simulations, and emergent player experiences. With a background spanning technology, product, and game design, Sergey explores new forms of interactive entertainment at the intersection of AI and play. He prototyped the early version of Courtroom Chaos and partnered with the Amber team to ship the title in 2025.

Patrick Santora Jr. is a Sr SA Marketing Demo Engineer at Amazon Web Services, where he designs and implements cutting-edge generative AI solutions and leads technical enablement initiatives. With over 25 years of technology and leadership experience, he has achieved notable recognition including presenting at AWS re:Invent and supporting fortune 500 companies across startups and other industry segments.

Gillian Smith (she/they) is the Director of Interactive Media and Game Development at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and GDC Summit Advisor for the Educators' Summit. She teaches artificial intelligence, novel interface design, and design-based research, and has a research practice focused on critical AI literacy and the ethics of generative AI in creative industries. Gillian has previously spoken at the GDC Education Summit, has given keynotes at academic conferences including AIIDE and IEEE Conference on Games, and is a regular speaker at academic and para-academic conferences related to games and interactive media.

Matt Stevenson has worked as a Senior Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) for over 5 years where he directly assists studios in building, running, and growing games in the cloud. In addition to general cloud architecture, Matt specializes in generative AI and game streaming. He is a 2x AWS re:Invent speaker who also has a passion for exploring human skills such as connection, leadership, and collaboration in the age of AI. Arya: Arya Subramanyam is a Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) based in Toronto, Canada, helping Independent Software Vendors architect and deploy cutting-edge generative AI solutions that push the boundaries of intelligent applications. Arya holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia. She specializes in multi-agent systems and production-ready AI architectures, and has presented on leveraging generative AI in gaming at multiple industry conferences including the AI & Games Conference in London, the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2025) in Ottawa, and AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. Arya actively contributes to the broader tech community through published technical blogs and thought leadership on emerging AI technologies.

Arya Subramanyam is a Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) based in Toronto, Canada, helping Independent Software Vendors architect and deploy cutting-edge generative AI solutions that push the boundaries of intelligent applications. Arya holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia. She specializes in multi-agent systems and production-ready AI architectures, and has presented on leveraging generative AI in gaming at multiple industry conferences including the AI & Games Conference in London, the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2025) in Ottawa, and AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. Arya actively contributes to the broader tech community through published technical blogs and thought leadership on emerging AI technologies.