After GOTY pull, Clair Obscur devs draw line in sand: 'Everything will be made by humans by us'

https://pawb.social/post/36955251

After GOTY pull, Clair Obscur devs draw line in sand: 'Everything will be made by humans by us' - Pawb.Social

> The gaming world appeared ablaze after the Indie Game Awards announced that it was rescinding the top honors awarded to RPG darling Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 due to the use of generative AI during development. Sandfall Interactive recently sat down with a group of influencers for a private interview session, where the French studio was probed about recent AI controversies. Game director Guillaume Broche clarified some of the misinformation surrounding the studio and reiterated what other Sandfall developers have said about generative AI usage during interviews held earlier in the year. > > Transcription of the Q&A comes courtesy of gaming content creator Sushi, who was one of the handful of influencers who were present at the session. Twitch streamer crizco prefaced his question by recounting the storm surrounding Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios’ admission about using generative AI during game development.

So if I’m reading it right they basically just tried it out and then decided to not use it, removing anything that used it? I can see how technically that it ‘was used at all in development’, but also seems a lil silly to pull the awards based on it.

They probably should have clarified how they used it a lot earlier, but I also don’t blame them for trying out a new tool.

Except that they used the placeholder AI textures so that they would have a functional build to test on. They didn’t just try it and decide it didn’t work. They literally used it produce part of the rough draft and even shipped the game with some of those placeholder textures accidentally still in there. It was actively used in this instance to “do work”.

It wasn’t “well let me see what this looks like… No that’s all wrong… Nevermind”. It was “well let’s get this AI to make some placeholders so we can continue working on this and we’ll slap the real textures in later”. Literally removing work from a human, which is the complaint of anti-AI people. Funny enough, I’m pro-AI and even I’m agreeing with the anti-AI people here. You want a “no AI was used” award? Then don’t ever use AI. Simple.

Dude, it was 2022. AI was nothing back then. Certainly not something that people were debating the morality of at the time. It was a new tool. A developer tried it out for a few very minor assets that were only meant to be placeholders. This was’t “literally removing work from a human(concept artist)”. FFS, it probably was the concept artist who used it!

Like imagine a new type of paint comes out that’s supposed to spread on canvas better. An artist gets some and tries a few test strokes on a blank canvas, goes “huh, interesting”, and then paints over it entirely with traditional paint. Then, the public turns against the new paint. Maybe it’s made from orphan blood, maybe it causes cancer; it doesn’t matter why, but it is now heavily frowned upon to use it. An art studio displaying the original artists work puts out a claim that none of their art uses the new type of paint. Were they lying? Like, ya technically I guess, but if you can’t see the nuance and understand how such a thing could happen, then your logic is less that of a human, and more that of a machine.