The integration of generative AI into game development has gone from a quiet experiment to an outright public fight. Two heavyweights — Ubisoft with Anno 117: Pax Romana and Activision with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 — have found themselves at the center of a storm as players point to what they call visible signs of AI-made assets in released games. The reaction has been sharp, and not entirely surprising.
Where players first saw the problem
For Black Ops 7 the controversy started small and then snowballed. Fans noticed more than 680 collectible Calling Cards, and many of them looked off: odd textures, anatomical quirks, and a generic, repetitive flair that didn’t belong in a premium title. Some compared the cards to the Studio Ghibli–style images that have been circulating in AI feeds online. People began calling the results “AI slop” — a blunt, angry term for assets that look mass-produced rather than carefully hand-crafted.
And it didn’t stay online chatter. Some players reported getting refunds on platforms like Steam, arguing they’d bought a product that hid the use of AI-generated material. Activision eventually acknowledged using “generative AI tools to help develop some in-game assets,” while insisting humans still lead the creative process. That answer, vague as it was, didn’t calm many players. If anything, it made the suspicion worse: are studios leaning on AI to cut cost and speed up production, and at what cost to quality?
Ubisoft’s Slipped Placeholder and the Loading-Screen Scandal
Ubisoft faced a similar backlash over Anno 117’s loading screens. The Anno series is known for its detailed, hand-painted imagery — a distinctive visual signature. Some of the new loading illustrations felt flatter, less coherent, as if they were missing the subtle touch of a human brush. Fans flagged these differences quickly.
Ubisoft replied that teams at Ubisoft Mainz do use AI for prototyping and iteration, and they blamed the controversy on an “unintentionally slipped placeholder asset.” They promised a human-made replacement in a future patch and defended the broader work of their artist teams. That explanation may be true. It may also leave a sour taste: a placeholder making it into retail builds suggests process gaps, or perhaps a willingness to ship assets that weren’t fully vetted.
Why this matters beyond a single texture
People aren’t upset just because a few images look weird. There are two linked worries here. First, artists fear for their jobs. Generative models are often trained on huge collections of existing art — sometimes scraped without consent — and that raises ethical questions. If AI can cheaply emulate styles, what happens to the livelihoods of illustrators and concept artists?
Second, consumers expect workmanship for a full-price AAA title. If you pay $70 or more, you assume someone cared enough about the tiny pieces of the product to make them right. When that expectation breaks, trust erodes. A stray calling card or a loading screen becomes symbolic: are publishers prioritizing profit and speed over craft and quality control?
The line between assist and replace
There’s nuance here. AI can help with mundane tasks — rapid prototyping, idea exploration, maybe even code completion — and many developers say they’re using it that way. The sticking point is when those tools start replacing final, visible assets. Where do we draw the line between assistance and replacement? Who gets credit, and who gets paid, if the final art is a hybrid of human and algorithm?
The current controversies suggest the community wants clarity. They want quality and they want human creativity preserved, or at least properly acknowledged. Until publishers offer clearer policies and tighter QA, skepticism will remain.
Final thought
This debate isn’t going away. As tools get smarter, the temptation to use them will grow, and the backlash will grow when results feel cheap or secretive. For now the message from players is blunt and consistent: don’t sacrifice human creativity for efficiency.
What do you think? Drop a comment below and tell us whether you care if AI helped create the art in your favorite games. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for more updates and discussion about the latest in game development and industry controversies.
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Sources:
- www.eurogamer.net/call-of-duty-black-ops-7-players-call-out-awful-apparent-use-of-generative-ai-for-in-game-calling-cards
- www.ign.com/articles/activision-responds-to-complaints-of-ai-generated-assets-in-call-of-duty-black-ops-7
- www.pcgamer.com/games/call-of-duty/call-of-duty-black-ops-7-under-fire-for-using-what-sure-looks-like-ai-generated-studio-ghibli-style-calling-card-art/
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