Generative AI has quietly penetrated into various well-known game masterpieces, but there are still a large number of developers who are strongly opposed to this technology. Digital Extremes studio has recently joined the camp of game developers who resist AI. Its community director Megan Everett said bluntly in an interview with GameSpot: "I firmly resist this crap from the bottom of my heart. I can't tolerate it at all."
"We are a company that completely refuses to use AI. All the content of "Star Warframe" and "Soul Warframe" are all created by real people." She said, "I don't even want to click on the timeline of any social platform to see the art works, because I can't help but think: 'Am I being cheated?' I can't tell whether the works I see in front of me are created by real people. This makes me extremely irritated. It's really too bad... There will never be any AI-generated content in our games, absolutely not."
In the same interview, Everett mentioned a recent community live broadcast: At that time, a viewer submitted an AI-generated Gundam fan painting inspired by "Star Wars". "I thought this painting was so cool at the time, so I showed it in the live broadcast," she said. "As a result, the audience watching the live broadcast instantly saw that it was generated by AI. I was completely shattered at the time. This thing is really insidious and impossible to guard against."
Although with the advent of the "video memory apocalypse", the AI bubble is on the verge of bursting, and developers have become increasingly skeptical of this technology, recent statistics still show that generative AI has become ubiquitous in the field of game development. "Arc Raider" has achieved great commercial success despite the extensive and frequent use of AI dubbing in the game; the game is currently gradually replacing AI-generated content with artificially produced materials, but its publisher Nexon has recently praised the game, saying it proves that AI is a cost-effective tool.
Even if a large studio like Digital Extremes clearly states the bottom line and draws a red line, the emerging beast of AI has already been overturned. A recent survey showed that 90% of developers hope that the Steam platform will introduce more detailed and unified AI content disclosure rules. However, many games have chosen to deal with it first instead of reporting in advance - such as "Red Desert" and "Anno 117". Both games have AI content that was originally only used as a "placeholder" and was quietly mixed into the official version of the game that was finally released.
Nowadays, the industry situation is mixed, and it is difficult to distinguish authenticity from fake. Some developers are even forced to modify the content just because their hand-created art works look like AI-generated ones. This kind of paranoid anxiety caused by crudely produced content by AI will inevitably be affected regardless of whether developers use this technology or not. But at least Everett's statement has doubled my expectations for "Soul Warframe", which has not yet been released and is still some time away from being launched.