Creative GenerationAugments Human LaborVerified
Reviewed and published by trentmaziarz, March 19, 2026. Discovered and drafted by our automated research pipeline.
EA uses a machine learning tool called HeadStart that converts real photographs of athletes into playable in-game faces. It was used to create over 11,000 unique player likenesses for EA Sports College Football 25 (2024) — a scale that EA says would not have been possible without AI.
Details
HeadStart analyzes submitted player photos to identify optimal head geometry, selecting from 240 pre-defined head shape templates. Artists then refine the results manually. For College Football 25, EA combined HeadStart with a custom stadium-building toolkit to deliver 11,000 player faces and 150 stadiums — assets CEO Andrew Wilson said were impossible to produce on this scale without machine learning. HeadStart has been part of EA's pipeline across multiple sports titles.
Products affected
EA Sports College Football 25EA sports titles broadly
Sources & Evidence
Cite this record
Trace Foundation. (2026). Electronic Arts (EA): EA uses a machine learning tool called HeadStart that converts real photographs of athletes into playable in-game faces. It was used to create over 11,000 unique player likenesses for EA Sports College Football 25 (2024) — a scale that EA says would not have been possible without AI (data as of 2026-03-19) [Data set record]. AI Trace. https://www.aitrace.org/r/practice/f8443635-5002-4d39-9c0c-1ff1a7c83a7d. Accessed October 11, 2026.
- Stable link
- https://www.aitrace.org/r/practice/f8443635-5002-4d39-9c0c-1ff1a7c83a7d
- Data as of
- March 19, 2026
- Last verified
- June 6, 2026
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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