I write dialogue for video games and AI has changed my process in ways I did not expect and am still not sure how to feel about

I have been writing dialogue and narrative for video games for seven years. I want to give a specific account of how AI has changed my work because the general takes on AI and creative writing tend to miss what actually happens at the craft level.

AI has made the early stages of my process faster. Generating variations on a line to find the right register, producing rough first drafts of scenes that I then rewrite completely, exploring character voice options before committing. For that kind of generative exploration where I am looking for material to react to rather than something finished, the tools are genuinely useful.

What has not changed and I do not think will change soon: the understanding of why a specific line of dialogue works for a specific character at a specific moment in a specific story. That requires knowing the whole game, the player's relationship with the character, the emotional beat this scene is doing. The AI does not know any of that and the outputs that ignore it are obvious when you read them.

My concern is not that AI will replace game writers. My concern is that people making budget decisions will believe it can before they have enough evidence either way.