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As the debate around generative AI in game development surges in the wake of controversies in games like Kingdom Hearts 4, Crazy Taxi: World Tour, and 1666: Amsterdam, a veteran Halo artist is warning developers against relying on the tech for creative direction.
Eddie Smith, a former Bungie employee and freelance artist who contributed to the original Halo trilogy, tells FRVR he saw AI's mask slip while working on the Las Vegas Sphere production of The Wizard of Oz. In order to wrap the original 4:3 frame film around the venue's massive 16K spherical screen, the production team reportedly used generative AI to create some of the art that would fill the gaps, but quickly found the process more cumbersome than it was worth.
"When they started it, of course, they thought the AI would do a lot of it," Smith says. "And they realized, no, the AI is really, it just does what you teach it to do. I look at AI almost like a toddler, an extremely advanced toddler, who's just learned how to talk and obey standard instructions. But they're still a really small child and they constantly have to be reinforced and read."
Ultimately, Smith says, human-made art was used in every frame of the production, as even with AI tools, extensive manual touch-ups were required just as they would've been had humans been doing the art from the beginning.
"I got to see what the monster looked like up close and then it, ironically, pun intended, it was like The Wizard with the curtained pulled back," Smith says. "It's like, 'Oh, okay. AI is not really that smart.'"
Of course, anyone who's looked at an image of AI-generated art for more than a short glance knows exactly what Smith is talking about. There's an uncanny quality to AI-generated imagery that's unmistakable, not to mention a conspicuously common problem getting right the amount of fingers and toes people tend to have on their hands and feet.
On the games side, a major controversy is the use of generative AI for concept art. Baldur's Gate 3 studio Larian found itself in hot water last year for embracing that very idea for its new Divinity RPG, but after facing severe backlash, reversed its stance entirely. After Crimson Desert became the latest example of AI-generated concept art allegedly slipping into the final game, Mewgenics co-creator Tyler Glaiel slammed the practice and said "that's where you want to be the most creative."
Smith would seem to agree, arguing that concept art creation is part of the foundational creative vision for a game, and that only humans are capable of forming that vision.
"They're gonna get a rude awakening because I was already part of that process," he says, adding, "I saw them go through that arc. I saw them realize, 'Oh, we're going to need to hire artists to do this.'"
It sounds like Smith is willing to accept the use of AI in some capacities, and some would argue that its presence is unavoidable, but he advises game developers to have a very strong, human-made vision for their projects – at most, something for AI to support rather than formulate.
"Unless you know what you're doing, AI is not going to help you," he says. "All the problems that people have had in games and the reasons why they don't finish games, AI is not going to solve that. AI is going to help you not finish games even more. If you're the type of art director who doesn't know what they want, you still won't know what you want."
