Sandfall Interactive further clarifies that there are no generative AI-created assets in the game. When the first AI tools became available in 2022, some members of the team briefly experimented with them to generate temporary placeholder textures. Upon release, instances of a placeholder texture were removed within 5 days to be replaced with the correct textures that had always been intended for release, but were missed during the Quality Assurance process
Sauce: …elpais.com/…/the-low-cost-creative-revolution-ho…
Not exactly a massive AI slop problem, right?
Can we put our collective pitchforks away for this case at least?
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Seems a bit excessive.
There’s AI slop games, the new breed of asset flips.
And then there’s “a few of our textures were computer generated.”
Naia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
For stuff like dirt/stone/brick/etc textures I’m less strict for the use of generative stuff. I even thinking having an artist make the “core” texture and then using an AI to fill out the texture across the various surfaces to make it less repetitive over a large area isn’t a problem for me.
Like, I agree that these things gernally are ethically questionable with how they are trained, but you can train them on ethically sourced data and doing so could open up the ability to fill out a game world without spending a ton of time, leaving the actual artists more time to work on the important set pieces than the dirt road connecting them.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And giving studios like this an edge over AAAs. It it’s the start of negating their massive manpower advantage.
In other words, the anti-corpo angle seems well worth the “cost” of a few generations. That’s the whole point of AI protest, right? It really against the corps enshittifying stuff.
warm@kbin.earth 2 weeks ago
Who made the textures or took the photos that them AI generated ones were derived from, do they get a cut? That justification is even more bizarre now, considering the tools we have to photoscan.
RagingRobot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Also what about AI code tools? Like if they use cursor to help write some code does that disqualify them?
seathru@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
If you do that and proceed to say “No we didn’t use any AI tools”. Then yes, that should be a disqualification.
“When it was submitted for consideration, representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.”
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah.
A lot of devs may do it personally, even if it’s not a company imperative (which it shouldn’t be).
leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Yes. Shit’s buggy enough as it is, infect it with this crap and it’s outright malware.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
People have made it excessive due to turning AI into a modern witch hunt. Maybe if people had a more nuanced take than “all AI bad” companies could be more open about how they use AI.
I can guarantee that if E33 came out with the AI disclaimer it would’ve been far more controversial and probably less successful. And technically they should have an AI label because they did use Gen AI in the development process even if none of it was supposed to end up in the final game.
But we can’t have companies being honest because people can’t be normal.
natecox@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
“All genAI bad” is a nuanced take. When you look at genAI from a moral, ethical, or sociopolitical perspective it always demonstrates itself to be a net evil.
The core technology is predicated on theft, the data centers powering it are harmful economically and to surrounding communities, it is gobbled up by companies looking to pay less to profit more, and it’s powered by a bubble ripe for bursting which will wreak havoc on our economy.
GenAI is indefensible as a technology, and the applications it may have for any tangible benefit can probably be accomplished by ML systems not built on the back of the LLM monster. We should all be protesting its use in all things.
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Its not surprising when even people who like AI are now being affected by consumer hardware prices that is leading to shift in previously positive perception of it.
People are being affected by it now on the consumer side so being hard to ignore its affects now. Gone from a philosophical difference to actually actual tangible consequences.
kilgore_trout@feddit.it 2 weeks ago
Let them have their award with their own rules.
HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 2 weeks ago
I have the same feeling about Kojima's and Vincke's latest comments on AI. Am I supposed to get mad at every single person who said they used/plan to use AI for something? I'd be as outraged as the average Fox News viewer, and it would be impossible to be taken seriously. I still won't be using AI myself (fuck surveillance state AI) and I'd be making every effort to encourage others not to use it, but there's no point in burning bridges and falling for rage bait.
They're creative people who care about the craft and care about the teams in their employ, which gives their statements weight, where some Sony/Microsoft/EA executive making an identical statement has none.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I understand the principle. Even if E33 is not “slop,” people should fear a road that leads to dependence on “surveillance state AI” like OpenAI.
That being said, I think a lot of people don’t realized how cheap and commoditized it’s getting. It’s not a monoculture, it’s not transcending. This stuff is racing to the bottom to become dumb tools, and honestly that’s something that makes a lot of sense for a game studio dev to want.
And E33 is clearly not part of the “Tech Bro Evangalism” camp. They made a few textures, with a tool.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Give it another 5 years maybe and local self-trainable models and alternative versions of it will be available that won’t have all the theft problems, surveillance problems and other issues. The tech is new and mainly controlled by giant companies right now.
It’s not like the tech is going to forever exist in a vacuum in the exact state. It’s in nothing ever does. Makes it doubly silly to get mad over a tool.
fonix232@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
At the end of the day it's all about the quality in my opinion.
The entire game could be written by ONE passionate person who is awesome at writing the story and the code, but isn't good at creating textures and has no money for voice actors - in which case said textures and all the voices would be AI generated, then hand retouched to ensure quality. That would still be a good game because obvious passion went into the creation of it, and AI was used as a tool to fill out gaps of the sole debeloper's expertise.
A random software house automating a full on pipeline that watches various trends on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc., and chains together various genAI models to create slopware games by the dozens, on the other hand, is undefendable. There's no passion, there's no spirit, there's just greed and abuse of technology.
Differentiation between the two is super important.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So is the source.
If they’re paying a bunch of money to OpenAI for mega text prompt models, they are indeed part of the slop problem. It will also lead to an art “monoculture,” Big Tech dependence, code problems, all sorts of issues.
Now, if they’re using open weights models, or open weights APIs, using a lot of augmentations and niche pipelines like, say, hand sketches to 3D models, that is different. That’s using tools.