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Lara Croft returns in Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis early next year, but her latest escapade is being soured somewhat by the presence of AI within the game's development. Fans made the discovery through the Steam page for the release, where the mandatory disclaimer gives some insight into the extent of the tech's presence.
On Valve's store, if you scroll down on the listing for Legacy of Atlantis, you can find the boilerplate warning. "AI-assisted tools were used during development to support some early exploration and temporary development content," developers Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog say. "Any AI-assisted assets were either replaced or refined by humans in order to maintain the creative and artistic vision of the development team."
There's a little bit to unpack here. The thing that stands out is the inclusion of the term "refined" in reference to whatever AI-generated materials were used in making the game. This points toward some AI assets still being present; they've just been cleaned up to the appropriate standard.
A recurring part of games being discovered to have AI contents is that the assets in question still contain hallmarks of generative software: blurriness, malformed shapes, and general "sloppiness." The idea may be to avoid such detection through refinement rather than changing the source of the work.
It sounds like some versions of this tech were used in conceptualizing and early prototyping. Other studios have suggested utilizing gen-AI in this form to help speed up the ideation part of game design.
However, while this seems logical on the surface, it's still potentially taking work away from concept artists and other human facets of the pipeline.
Regardless, players aren't enamored by the prospect. "It's kind of a slippery slope imo, they say they replaced it, but there is no way of knowing for sure. For all we know, they could have just polished the AI assets to make them look less AI," says one fan on Reddit.
"I assume it means concept art and temporary assets that artists then worked off of, which I'm not really happy about or cool with, but I suppose is 'better' than just painting the game with AI textures," another adds.
There are conflicting ideals here because game development is increasingly time-consuming and expensive, especially for bigger games. Teams are always searching for ways to streamline things, one way or another. That said, AI solutions are ethically dubious at the moment, and the pushback is omnipresent.
Neither the developers nor publisher Amazon Game Studios has commented on this issue just yet. We'll update you if and when they do.
