After the recent accusation of AI generated art assets in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, publisher Activision has responded with an official statement which kind of acknowledges the issue indirectly. Players of the recently released Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has been complaining across social media about the presence of Studio Ghibli styled images in the game during many instances, which they believe are mostly AI generated, but now Activision has put forward a statement that sort of confirms those claims, in a way. Here’s what they said:
“Like so many around the world, we use a variety of digital tools, including AI tools, to empower and support our teams to create the best gaming experiences possible for our players. Our creative process continues to be led by the talented individuals in our studios.”
And it’s important to remember that the official Steam page of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 includes the following official disclaimer which is kind of vague, and seems pretty intentionally kept that way.
“Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets.”
One of the big reasons why many players are fundamentally against the usage of AI generated assets in videogames cause it gives the publishers kind of a leeway to substitute the overall manual efforts and labors of the developers and replace them with elements that are generic in quality but easy to build, which can result in lots of layoffs among the employees.
As the industry has shown itself to place profit over people, tools such as generative AI can easily used to replace or substitute the human involvement, at least in many areas of game development.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 came out on November 14 for both PC and consoles and has had somewhat of a mixed reception from many critics and players alike with strong criticisms aimed at the first person shooter’s online-only campaign mode which doesn’t allow pausing or even Checkpoints.
