It makes the pre production go quicker because the artists can get a feel for an art direction quicker and pass it on to other artists to fine tune it or create something fresh and new based based of the prototyping. It's not rocket science lol.

Have you read the article? They are not replacing humans with AI.... they are only using AI for prototyping ideas and that's it. There is no actual generative AI in the game itself.

I never properly finished Returnal lol got side tracked. Was fun though.

Indeed it does!