cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/32164297
Some video games have been trying to use generative AI for years now, and for the most part people simply have not been having it. Why would we? It’s lazy, it’s ugly, it’s an ethical black hole and it’s being driven by an executive class desperate to lay off even more workers. While earlier and more brazen attempts at employing the tech were obvious, lately it’s becoming more common for studios to slide a little AI-generated content in without drawing attention to it.
Jurassic World Evolution 3 launched with some AI-generated character portraits, then got bullied into removing them. Clair Obscur, which will be a lot of people’s game of the year, appeared to quietly launch with some AI-generated art then just as quietly patch it out. I was going to review the city-building grand strategy game Kaiserpunk until I saw they were using AI-generated images for their dialogue sections, after which I promptly uninstalled it.
The latest culprit is The Alters, which has found to have shipped not only with AI-generated placeholder text in-game, but also employed AI-generated translations in some of its side content as well. None of this was disclosed prior to the game’s release; it was all discovered later, by players, and has prompted an explanation of sorts from the developers which tries to calm everyone down, but which has just made things worse, because if it took people discovering these specific instances to find that 11 Bit had used AI-generated content in the game’s development, how do we know there’s not more of it?
The Alters used AI to generate placeholders IN DEVELOPMENT. They then replaced them when a couple slipped through. It shipped with one line of AI generated translation that was left in by accident. Fucking Internet rumours… SMH.
As you say, it is a little bit blown out of proportion and perfectly reasonable to rely on tools that can make your life a little easier but the article does make a good argument about not wanting AI ‘slop’ in video games / art in general.
What also doesn’t sit right with me is how the studio didn’t bother declaring that AI was used in the game. ‘lovingly crafted, with a touch of dishonesty and intellectual theft’
AI being used for game content is one thing, being used to make developers’ lives easier is another. What bookmeat describes (not sure about accuracy) is not “AI slop in video games”. This is functionally the same as a developer using AI tools for coding, and going after that is pretty deep witch hunt territory. To address the intellectual theft thing, using AI in coding is about as much intellectual theft-y as copying code off Stack Overflow, and I have never seen anyone call for developers to disclose whether they used Stack Overflow. What I want to say is: No matter how much you hate AI, these are very innocuous uses that harm no one and frankly there’s no reason to disclose them.
Considering what this sub is, I’d be concerned about the response if I question which way the tp is sposed to be mounted