Activision Finally Fesses Up To Using AI In Call Of Duty, Thanks Steam!

AI is being heralded as an important part of the future game development pipeline by the biggest players in the industry, with the latest push coming from Microsoft with the release of its Muse AI model. However, it seems as if the future is here, according to Call of Duty’s Steam page that now contains an AI generated content disclosure.

This revelation comes thanks to a change in Steam policy made a year ago, where the company is asking developers to disclose if their games use either pre-generated or live-generated AI content. Steam informed developers it will “include much of your disclosure on the Steam store page for your game, so customers can also understand how the game uses AI.”

Activision has been vague with its disclosure, though. The game’s page only says, “the developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this: Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets.” It’s not much to go on, as the publisher is likely aware of the unpopularity of AI in gaming right now and probably prefers to keep the details to itself.

However, the Call of Duty community already called out the publisher for flagrant use of AI well before the disclosure was added. Back in December of last year, many players noticed that artwork of a Santa zombie used in a loading screen was sporting six fingers, which is a telltale sign of AI generated artwork. Moreover, a user on the game’s subreddit suspected the use of AI in the making of a calling card available in a cosmetic bundle after noticing some anomalies.

The vagueness of the disclosure makes it difficult to tell if it’s for the obvious use for the artwork or if anything in the game world itself was made with AI. At the very least gamers will now have this kind of information available to them thanks to Steam’s policies.