Productivity AutomationAugments Human LaborVerified
Reviewed and published by trentmaziarz, March 19, 2026. Discovered and drafted by our automated research pipeline.
EA deployed an internal AI chatbot called ReefGPT and mandated that developers use it as a tool in their daily work. According to a 2025 investigative report, employees said the tool frequently produced flawed code and errors that had to be fixed manually, in some cases costing more time than working without it.
Details
Revealed through a Business Insider investigation in October 2025. EA required developers across studios — including those working on The Sims and Battlefield — to complete multiple AI training courses and to treat ReefGPT as a standard part of development. Workers reported that the chatbot's hallucinations (instances where it confidently produced wrong or nonsensical outputs) led to bugs in game code. A widely circulated internal Slack message mocking the executive AI mandate received widespread reactions from staff. EA's SEC filings acknowledge that AI systems "might present social and ethical issues."
Products affected
Cross-studio (The SimsBattlefieldand others)
Sources & Evidence
News Article
Other practices by Electronic Arts (EA)
OtherEA announced Project Atlas in 2018 as a cloud-based platform for building and running games, with AI built directly into the development environment — including a demonstration of AI generating game terrain from real-world geographic survey data. Its current status within EA's infrastructure is unclear.OtherEA deployed an internal AI mandate across its approximately 15,000 employees starting in 2024, requiring use of tools including an in-house chatbot called ReefGPT for coding, playtester feedback summarization, and other tasks. The mandate overlapped in timing with layoffs of approximately 670 employees in February 2024 and a further 300 to 400 in April 2025; EA has not officially attributed the workforce reductions to AI.OtherEA is developing an unreleased mobile product called Project Air where players can create AI characters, interact with them using open-ended text conversations, and share them with other players. It is EA's most experimental generative AI product to date.
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