AI Slop in the face

Artificial Intelligence has become an integral part of our day; from helpful chatbots taking over our jobs, to destroying the environment, it has encroached every facet of our lives. AI has always been there in gaming and an increasing number of gaming companies are pushing to use AI in their workflows, to generate art in games, write the scripts and even code the game.

At the same time, while companies such NVIDIA are showing off DLSS 5, an AI-powered ‘beauty filter’, gamers are outright pushing back. In a world where game companies are laying off employees, the debate is on. Who benefits most from this?

What is AI Slop?

Simply put, AI ‘photocopies’ human work out there on the internet and then spits out mass produced, uninspired pastiches that look great, but feel utterly soulless. As these large language models or generation models train themselves on their own created slop, the faster things degrade, in what experts call an Autophagus Loop Syndrome that drowns anything creative as it rushes to make a cheap copy of it.

So why AI?

Well, it is a no brainer at times, since AI can do things much faster, allowing a gaming studio to release thrice as many games. This reduces the bottom line, saving money and letting companies fire humans to replace them with machines. While that is the extreme, most studios claim they use AI for rapid prototyping or ideation, to see if an asset or idea fits and when it does, they give it to artists to work on.

Then, there are small developers without the resources of larger teams, who rely on AI pipelines for everything from assets and content to cinematics and play testing. In this case, is it ethical for a developer to use AI to realise their dream made by tools that exist through copyright theft?

On the other hand, the world is going through a massive hardware shortage; RAM and GPU prices will slowly hit the roof as well. Nvidia sees AI in a different way. With DLSS 5, a decent graphics card can output groundbreaking visuals without causing more strain to the hardware market and make the real powerful graphics cards supply go to AI powerhouses.

Push back

However, the debate is on with gamers. Just recently, the latest Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, wowed gamers only to find a disclaimer that AI was used in visualising and ideating the game. While the studio developers did come out to defend their decisions, the optics were not good and caused furious uproar. Some defended the decision, but many chose not to buy the game. Some even justified flying the black flag of piracy, saying if a human was not paid to make it, a human need not pay to use it.

Nvidia’s first reveal of DLSS 5 drew some wonder, but the ‘beauty filter’ converted faces of beloved characters into AI Slop approximations referred to as ‘uncanny valley’. Claiming to only affect lighting and improve geometry, the filter cranked up contrast, contours and saturation making the uniquely crafted Grace look like a makeup influencer in a zombie apocalypse.

Digital Foundry appeared to praise DLSS 5 from a technical standpoint, but lost a lot of credibility when the community brought up issues of massive infringement on artistic integrity in gaming and loss of individualism. The memes were fantastic though, please do search for ‘DLSS 5 memes’ after reading this.

Future tense

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took home a stunning nine awards at The Game Awards, yet was disqualified from the Indie Games Awards for its use of AI-generated placeholder textures. Some celebrate while others do not want to see this bastion of an artform fall.

Gaming is powered by a passionate community that does not want to see these worlds collapse into AI slop. The future may bring about a compromise into what is and is not right AI usage in games. A future that will protect, award and find a place for its human creators, while other industries are so quick to fire them.

Till then, the truth remains that only the billionaires at the top of AI companies are benefitting.