Call of Duty admits it's using generative AI to 'help develop some in-game assets', and suddenly all those poorly made calling cards make sense
After months of players calling foul of suspected AI art in Call of Duty, Activision has admitted it's using generative AI to make assets for its billion-dollar franchise. This revelation comes not from a formal statement issued by the company, but a Valve-mandated AI disclosure now found at the bottom of the Call of Duty Steam page (as spotted by CharlieIntel):
«Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets,» the disclosure reads.
For some time now, Call of Duty players have suspected that Activision is using AI to generate cosmetics in Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 6. Last year, a Wired report called out a calling card included in the $15 «Yokai's Wrath» bundle. Then in the weeks after Black Ops 6's historically successful launch, players noticed obvious signs of generative AI in holiday-themed loading screen (notice the six-fingered zombie), another hand with perhaps too many digits promoting Zombies Gobblegum, and several glaring oddities with the sexy «Hard Breakup» calling card.
Activision has not specified if it's using generative AI to produce the 2D art in loading screens or promotional calling cards, but the Steam page disclosure makes the claims easier to believe. It's one thing to phone in the loading screen for a Christmas mode, but it'd be another to slip generated art into a paid cosmetic bundle, or in the case of Hard Breakup, ask players to grind for hours to unlock AI slop.
«Disappointingly, I just grinded for an AI generated calling card,» wrote Reddit user Poodonkus in December. «I had heard of a cool pin-up style calling card for completing this challenge, but I wasn't expecting to find out after trying to figure out what was supposed to be on her belt (surprise, just shapeless artifacts of a neural network image generator), that there are glaring hallmarks of an unrefined AI-generated image.»
I'll be the first to admit I've stared at the details of an image long enough to be convinced it's AI when it's probably not, but
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