Call of Duty sells millions upon millions of copies every year and pockets even more money through microtransactions and in-game purchases. But as its community has been well aware for a while, Activision Blizzard is using generative AI to create assets within the release.
While it was obvious once six-fingered zombies started to appear in artwork in the outing, the company has now officially disclosed the detail.
As spotted by Charlie Intel on X (or Twitter), the product page for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on Steam says: “Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets.”
The disclaimer doesn’t detail how the game is using generative AI, but from what we’ve seen, some of the Calling Cards and other cosmetic items you can unlock use the tech. Perhaps most galling of all here is that these are often included in Operator Bundles and sold for real money.
As we alluded to earlier, various splash screens within the game have also used generative AI, such as this example below:
While it seems inevitable that more and more publishers will start turning to generative AI to cut costs, it’s disappointing to see one of the biggest franchises in the world, with multi-team workforces dedicated to it, being among the first to start cutting corners.
[source store.steampowered.com, via x.com]
Comments 55
To be honest though, the AI art is perhaps more interesting than a lot of the art that typically surrounds CoD games, even if it’s for the wrong reasons.
I was just thinking to myself, back in PS2 days, longest games like GTA San Andreas took around 30 hours to complete and 70 hours to 100%. A game like God of War took around 5-8 hours to complete. Not to mention that due to hardware limitations, artists and game developers didn't have to spend much time on details as the hardware was incapable of rendering them.
How much did games cost back then? $40
Adjusted to inflation that's around $70.63 today.
Nowadays games are much much larger, a linear game like The Last of Us Part 2 easily takes around 30-40 hours just to get to the ending and the game studios are in an arms race to add the most breathtaking details to their games, bloating the development time and money exponentially.
How much games cost today? $70, i.e similar to how games were priced back in early 2000' adjusted to inflation.
Unfortunately games development runs on money and money comes from investors. Investors see the numbers I just mentioned (stuff like return on investment, how long it takes to even out, risk factors, etc) and it's obvious why we see such stuff to happen.
The industry needs the AA saviours more than anything else right now.
The fact that Sony has almost no current gen only games 5 years into PS5 gen compared to previous generations is a reflection of this point, as game development times have bloated so hard and the risks are too much that games are either cancelled or take ages to come out. And at the end the of the day, we see more of the tried and tested games like the 98th installment of COD, 245th installment of FIFA, new ridiculous skins for Fortnite and the like.
What we really need IMO is smaller games like Helldivers 2, Returnal and the like.
Edit: typos.
Pro tip, if you draw a zombie yourself then it won’t have 6 fingers.
One more reason not to get this game.
I dont have a problem with AI in gaming why spend thousands of hours making a game in high resolution and high frame rate when you can just use AI to make them higher resolution and generate extra frames
As if i needed another reason to boycott activision/COD
@nessisonett Or at least go back and refine or edit it. Maybe not all the effort, maybe just a little effort, Activision.
The game allegedly cost $700m to make, what did they spend the money on!?
Look, as an expert on everything, especially gaming, Call of Duty is crap and always has been. It is the same game that rerelease EVERY year and it is the same people with muscle memory intact only that plays the game. If anything, it is the COD fans that are procedurally generated.
Removed - advertising
@Deadhunter At that point just draw it yourself. Going back to edit AI generated artwork is pointless as it lacks the bones of real art, like only having one surface layer instead of the many, many layers of paint built up from an initial sketch. A real painting created by a human, each individual element is informed by the others just due to how the human brain works, we can literally see the bigger picture. AI art looks like that because they have zero idea of the bigger picture, it’s quite literally one pixel next to another for the entire image and so inconsistencies extend beyond the fixable as pixels do not combine to create one cohesive image. Gets a bit ‘Trigger’s broom’ (Ship of Theseus if you’ve seen WandaVision and pretend you’re into Greek myth like a poser), if you’re going over it pixel by pixel to make it look like it’s from a human. That’s what suits are banking on, it being ‘good enough’ for people to not care and make us settle for less because it costs them less to produce. AI cannot dream. AI cannot feel. Anything created by AI lacks the human experience that informs every single piece of media ever, I will take the worst piece of crap ever produced by a human over a soulless approximation of the human condition guesstimated by an algorithm.
One of the biggest, best selling every year franchises in the world owned by one of the biggest, richest companies in the world and still they can't spend a bit more money to do it right and pay people properly for their work. Truly pathetic.
Excited for the inevitable Honest Phil Spencer interview where he moves the goalposts to try and make this sound like a good thing.
@Resurrected-X460
This make soooo much sense.
I recently replayed the original God of war, took me around 9 hours. Enjoyed that length. Give me a 10 hour game for £40 every three years instead of 50 hours of filler every 6 years please.
@Bagwag82 "Anyway it's pointless trying to go against it."
Well, I sure as hell am going to try!
It's only pointless if you give up about it. Besides, even if it doesn't affect anything in the end, at least I can live with clear conscience and know that I didn't abandon what I believe in.
Anyway, I'm ready to boycott every single game that uses generative AI. I'm just hoping that the developers will be transparent about it.
As far as I can tell every single calling card and emblem uses AI to check the artist's work or create the piece from scratch
I'm excited to see AI introduced more and more. It will allow bigger studios to take more risks without tanking the whole studio and allow smaller developers to fill that AA gap in the market. Win win.
@KoopaTheGamer And how will you avoid AI in everyday life? Don't suppose you use chat assistants on websites. They are the lower level AIs.
If you haven't got a PS5 Pro what will you do when you get one or a PS6 because PSSR uses AI. Will you just abandon gaming on any console that uses AI?
Also if you look at the wider world will you be refusing medical treatment because AI was used in the development of new medications or cures?
@Bagwag82 Yes
@djlard fair enough everyone has a choice. But I'm afraid there will be no escaping it. It will be in every day life from TVs you phones everything. So what will you realistically do then?
Activision: We use AI and it makes blatant mistakes but we can't be bothered to fix them.
@nessisonett the 6 fingers may just be another lesser-known side effect of the zombie plague, you don't know
Never saw a zombie, so I don't know how many fingers it has.
A lot of the calling cards are so clearly AI generated and its makes me not want to use them.
Sad times.
I don't have a problem with using AI but use it for coding. At least that could shorten the development and testing time. However, if they're using it to create crappy stuff for easy money, it's simply just sad.
They also use AI to generate buildings in WarZone
If AI means we get production cycles back down into the 3-5 years timeframe instead of the 7-10 year I’m good with it.
Just concentrate on the gameplay more!!
@Bagwag82 Let me clarify. I'm against AI that aims to imitate human creativity or human thinking. I don't really mind DLSS or PSSR because it's not a creative task. What's more, it's a task that human couldn't do to begin with (although real time human image upscaling would be an interesting challenge). Similarly, I don't mind if AI is used for scientific research if it's just some mechanical work and the other alternative is brute force computation.
However, I do mind if AI is used for creative works like games, books, movies etc to create the content itself. What's the point of art if there is no emotion behind it?
I also dislike ChatGPT, but for a bit different reasons. It has potential to be extremely dangerous because it can just hallucinate misinformation. It's interesting that you brought up the health care, because that's one area where wrong instructions from a chatbot could do some serious damage. Of course, AI can also be used (and has been used) intentionally for malicious purposes, plenty of cases where fake images were used to try and fool people.
Can I avoid AI completely in my everyday life? Probably not. But I can choose to not support companies that use AI. If I buy a new phone, I'll get one that doesn't have AI features. If not possible, then I disable them immediately.
So yeah, I'll avoid all of the games that I know have AI generated content. If every major studio starts to use AI, then I'll just play indie games that don't. Lots of old games to play too.
I'm still not that knowledgeable about generative AI tools, but it's my understanding that - when creating an image, say - you tell the tool what you want and it pulls from sources online to create something? How hard is it to go "oh bt-dubs, make sure there's not too many fingers, innit"?
@Markatron84 It depends on what they were trained on. For instance, ask ChatGPT to produce an image of a glass of wine filled all the way to the brim. It can't do it, because the vast, vast majority of images of wine glasses are either completely empty, or only filled to a normal-drinking amount. ChatGPT will even tell you that the image shows a glass of wine filled all the way to the brim when getting this wrong.
In the case of hands, it's because hands are very complicated bits of anatomy, with lots of variation in poses among the training data and individual elements. These models don't understand what a 'hand' is, they just know they look sort of like this. But they have no concept of how many fingers a hand should have, or where the bones go and how they function, that the fingers typically only bend in one direction, etc.
@Markatron84 the thing is, the AI doesn't know how many fingers an image has.
It's not intelligent at all.
It just copy/paste works from its database together to create some frankenstein image. But since hands are always in different positions it doesn't really know what a hand looks like.
@dBackLash @StrickenBiged thanks for explaining it to me. Like I said, I'm still struggling to even understand a lot of generative AI stuff. You'd think with the amount of news (and uproar) posted about it on a daily basis I'd have figured it out by now 😂
The whole series has been creatively bankrupt for the last 15 years, so makes sense that they can’t even be bothered to make it themselves anymore.
That makes sense if they trained their AI to copy previous entries in the franchise. Each game is pretty much the same as the previous one. This just shows the laziness of the developer.
EA could do the same with the off brand FIFA and nobody would see a difference
@Bagwag82 AI will screw up after Real Look post-process so it will be clearly recognised.
@Resurrected-X460 Brilliant comment bud you're absolutely right, the AA's and Indies are carrying this gen so far.
Slop game made using slop generator.
Hmm, unfortunately, the world as we once knew will change forever and there's no going back.
This is only the beginning what many people don't realise is AI is as big as say the invention of the steam engine.
We are only at the beginning. There are 10 levels of AI. The next level is ASI Artificial Super Intelligence. Level 10 is know as Godlike AI.
Anyway it's pointless trying to go against it.
As an artist I've decided to embrace it, not for creating my art because I'm a painter. But to help me with the day to day tasks with the business.
As a painter I see it as though AI will add value to my artwork. People will favour traditional hand painted artwork by a human than something created by a computer programme as there is skill involved and uniqueness.
AI over the next few years will advance so quickly. People will lose jobs and governments will fail to legislate as quickly as it advances. But it does need legislation even if it can't be updated as quickly.
@Frmknst Sorry Bobby, I just think the series is beyond stale and I thought that before they:
1. Put in loot boxes,
2. Jumped on the battle royale trend,
3. Made said BR pay to win with weapons and skins.
4. Nikki minaj.
5. Worthless game discs with no content on it
6. Bloated downloads
7. Rehashed story content
8. Cannibalised all the other Activision studios to churn out slop content over other games
That’s just what I can remember off the top of my head while sat on the toilet.
Personally AI garbage is low on my list of CoD transgressions so I summed it all up with “CoD is creatively bankrupt”.
Anyway, resume enjoying your game. Peace.
@Jrs1 Thanks buddy! Totally agree
I am sure the vast majority of the target audience for COD couldn’t care less if it’s used or tell you what Generative AI even is.
@mightyscampster Thanks buddy. I live that game! Exactly, we need shorter, AA games.
@AgentMantis executive bonuses
@AgentMantis They have another one in the pipeline coming out this year from the same developer so maybe some of the money went into that project.
I think black ops 6 was a throw away game but this upcoming game will try and compete for mind share and player retention when a game like GTA 6 gets released because I've noticed the best Call of Duty products come out when another big player like rockstar releases a big game.
But I won't be buying it that's for sure, especially with all of this Ai slop 😂
@KoopaTheGamer in short tike from now many singleplayer games will use Aai too. Seems you'll have to quit playing games.
@N0CYmr0k Could be. Well, at least I have more time to read books!
@KoopaTheGamer I hear you. I think in that case games companies should state whether their games have used AI to help create them.
I mean there's no right or wrong answer here. Just that I guess we all have a choice to an extent.
But what we have right now is the beginning basic foundations AI.
But everyday People honestly do not see what's coming and how much the world will change.
I think people should do a bit of research into AI to understand where we are at now and where it's going.
@djlard what we have now is nothing compared to what's coming. This is beginner AI.
@Deadhunter Activision has been selling COD players the same maps for years. You think any of their developers can count to 6?
@Resurrected-X460 Don't games sell in much higher numbers now as gaming is less a niche hobby to what it was back then? So even though game prices haven't changed much they still make more?
@Panic_Attache Actually no. The total number of consoles and PCs has remained largely the same, and the average attach rate (number of games per consoles sold) is largely the same. Even then, current spendings are mostly in a few titles (FIFA, Fortnite, etc) and not distributed over a large number of titles.
Call of Slop: Sludge Ops 6
I can count the reasons for not being a CoD gamer on one hand. I have six reasons.
@Bagwag82 Yes. The beast has been stupidly released without considering consequences or any backdoors.
Screw AI. Game will still sell like crazy though
@Resurrected-X460 I stand corrected then, and have learnt something new today.
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