Abstract:
At the opening night live broadcast of Gamescom last week, the new "Civilization" strategy game "Humans 2" released a blockbuster first trailer. However, shortly after the trailer went online, some netizens claimed that some or even all of the images were generated by AI tools. The game developer immediately denied this statement and recently released an extended behind-the-scenes video showing that the trailer was completed using real-life construction and real-person filming.
On September 4, Amplitude Studio released a one-and-a-half-minute production behind-the-scenes video, which completely recorded the filming process of this first trailer. At the beginning of the video, it is explained that the reason why the behind-the-scenes content is disclosed is because there are a lot of comments on the Internet saying that the trailer is a crude product of AI. However, Amplitude stated that no part of the trailer was generated using AI tools, but was instead produced using a combination of real people, real animals, and real scenes, supplemented by CG images and special effects.
The development team of "Human 2", which will be released in 2027, said that this trailer was produced by the creative agency BETC, which has created many trailers for previous games. The trailer shooting was completed in "multiple real-life studios, each corresponding to a different historical era, and the style of each period is restored through unique costumes, props, lighting and performances." BETC also teamed up with CG and visual effects studio LiveFX to add CG tornadoes, explosions and other images to the trailer, enhancing the visual effects of some scenes.
BETC creative director Benjamin Le Breton explained in a press release: "Our goal was to condense the grand span of human history into 73 seconds without losing emotional weight. We don't want to just tell the story of civilization, but want the audience to experience it immersively. Seeing the world from the perspective of a newborn allows us to travel through nine different eras, and also reminds us that each generation inherits the legacy of its predecessors and also has the opportunity to redefine the future."
So, why do so many netizens rashly conclude that this trailer was generated by AI? I have a few guesses. On the one hand, the first-person perspective camera movements in the trailer were a bit stiff, and the blur effect added later caused some people to misjudge the film. And I guess a lot of people are watching on their phones, which makes it harder to see the details. In addition, the public is now generally worried that the content they see is the product of shoddy AI, and games using generative AI were indeed unveiled at Gamescom this year. The combination of various factors has led many people to regard this trailer with real shots and real actors as AI-generated content.
However, we should not jump to conclusions without conclusive evidence. If all content that looks a little inconsistent, has blurry images or is of poor quality is dismissed as "AI garbage", it will only make it easier for truly inferior content to get through, and it will also make creators who have carefully polished real content suffer for no reason.
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