A new report claims that generative AI has already been used in Call of Duty, without the fans even knowing it.
Dexerto shared details from an investigation by Wired, that claimed generative AI has already been used in games and content that gamers are already playing. It is also a factor in the wave of layoffs that has been hitting the industry.
The report names Activision Blizzard and Riot Games in particular, but presumably other companies are doing the same. We ourselves reported on EA openly flouting that they made their own generative AI model to power the new Player Roles system in the upcoming EA Sports FC 25.
Based on Wired’s report, Activision got started using generative AI in early 2023, and had access to GPT 3.5 to make their own generative AI tools. So in late 2023, Activision sold their first AI-generated cosmetic in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s in-game store.
It doesn’t seem to be clear if Wired directly claimed that the Yokai’s Wrath Operator Bundle was confirmed to be one such content that used generative AI. CharlieIntel shared this claim, because a picture of the bundle was used in the article. But none of their sources, even anonymously, were quoted to be making this claim.
What we do know is that Microsoft announced layoffs at Activision Blizzard after this bundle was released. Wired’s report also makes the general claim that a lot of the content that has released since then included AI generated content.
Now, if you were wondering why no one noticed that it was AI generated, the situation is much different than it seemed when the words ChatGPT and OpenAI were trending the first time. We’ll need to get into a quick refresher on the technology here.
If traditional AI is focused on analyzing data and performing tasks, generative AI is about generating content. Generative AI needs data to generate that content, and that data can come in the form of art, but it can also be audio, language, etc.
For this report, the relevant AI model is DALL-E, which famously makes art out of any random prompt. But that model was literally using data scoured from the internet, and that could make it fall foul of copyright laws.
Companies like Activision Blizzard do not have to use this DALL-E. They can produce their own generative AI art model, that’s been trained on the actual content of the companies’ products. That can include the art assets of their games, as well as production materials and marketing materials. And here’s the clincher; Activision can have the artists use the AI themselves, to generate the prompts, and also to correct the work afterwards.
But perhaps we should have been paying attention more carefully around the world. There were also reports of this happening in the Chinese video game industry last April, a few months after American game companies were doing this in private. It’s likely that Chinese game companies were actually catching up to their Western colleagues.
While Activision Blizzard and Riot Games are in the spotlight here, we shouldn’t get this twisted. Generative AI might already be in your favorite new game right now. The game companies already know enough to cover their tracks, so no, you won’t be able to tell just by looking.
Ironically, EA is at least brave enough to make their intentions public and take the flak. If anything, the companies should be made to admit if they are already using generative AI. And there’s no lack of layoffs across the industry, including both PlayStation and Xbox, for us to go sniffing around if that’s what happened there.
