Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 players have been accusing various loading screens and calling cards from the game of being AI-generated since it came out last fall, but it was only ever based on vibes and the occasional very convincing piece of seemingly obvious AI slop. Now Activision has admitted to using AI-generated assets in the hit multiplayer shooter on its Steam page.
The developers describe how their game uses AI generated content like this: “Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets,” reads the disclosure on Valve’s storefront, recently spotted by CharlieIntel. While it doesn’t elaborate any further on which assets are made with AI and how, the confession has reaffirmed what some fans had been claiming for months.
The Black Ops 6 slop controversy began last October, a week before the game released, with allegations spreading on YouTube of certain prestige emblems looking AI-generated. A set of sexy vampire calling cards raised red flags again in early November, with fans pointing at different parts of the art that looked oddly rendered.
But the most convincing examples of potential AI slop arrived in early December. Loading screens depicted hands with extra digits, a tell-tale sign of work produced by algorithms built on stealing other artists’ work, but not knowing how to count. One loading screen included a black glove with six fingers holding billiard balls.
The second was a zombie Santa holding up hand that had six fingers. Both were laughably egregious at the time, but also fostered fears that other less obvious examples might also have been AI-generated. The appearance of the Zombie Santa was even worse in the context of Zombies mode’s voice actors being replaced amid a SAG-AFTRA strike for greater AI protections in game acting.
Activision’s new disclosure comes after previous reports that developers within the company were encouraged to experiment with new AI tools in their work. A report by Wired claimed an entire paid cosmetic was made with help from AI in 2023’s Modern Warfare, after the publisher had greenlit the tools for help with making concept art and marketing materials. That same year, then CEO Bobby Kotick praised the work being done at OpenAI and other companies, suggesting the technology would be as transformative as the original Macintosh computer.
Now Activision is owned by Microsoft, which touted the largest launch ever for Black Ops 6 last fall thanks in part to Game Pass, and has itself been moving full-steam ahead with trying to incorporate generative AI into game development. The company recently announced Muse, a model for visualizing gameplay built on data captured from people playing Ninja Theory’s 2020 PvP game Bleeding Edge. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer even claimed similar technology would aid in game preservation by making it easier to emulate classics on modern hardware.
But so far, Black Ops 6 has proven generative-AI tools and the current level of quality control around them often can’t even get simple static images on loading screens right. Fortunately, a new SteamDB tag lets players filters games that us generative-AI out of their store searches.
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