AI assets are an unconscionable risk for premium-priced games (www.gamesindustry.biz)

The games industry has quietly moved from debating whether AI will be used to arguing where to draw the line — and consumers are starting to draw that line firmly around visible generative assets. While developers routinely rely on “AI” for innocuous tasks (image upscaling, voice recognition, IDE autocompletion), high‑visibility art and audio created by generative models is provoking backlash when it appears in premium, full‑price titles. Recent controversy around Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 — where obviously AI‑generated banner art and assets were called out by players — crystallizes broader concerns: poor aesthetics (“AI slop”), environmental and legal worries about training data and IP, and a sense of disrespect when large franchises substitute machine-made content for human craftsmanship. For the AI/ML community this matters because it separates acceptable tool‑use from risky asset‑creation. Technical distinctions (LLMs/transformers for generative media vs. older ML upscalers or recognition systems) map directly to business and UX risks: AI artifacts are often recognizable at high resolution, undermine perceived authenticity, and can erode brand premium and pricing power. The practical implication is that studios must choose their market position — fast/cheap vs. premium/handmade — and weigh tradeoffs (quality, ethics, IP exposure, PR fallout) before deploying generative pipelines for visible game content.