In defense of placeholder assets: why generative AI accidentally appears in so many games

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is the latest in a long series of games to admit to using generative AI in the development process. In defense of developer Owlcat, at least it's being up front about it, even if people are still angry about its use of the divisive technology. Earlier this week, Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss apologized for AI assets "unintentionally included" in the game's final release. It's a tale as old as Midjourney, as games like The Alters and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have also used the oops-it-wasn't-meant-to-ship excuse when caught. Ladies and gentleman, this is why placeholder assets are meant to stand out.

No matter what former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra thinks, players are revolting against AI when they see it permeating their games. Developers have taken this on board and are mostly avoiding the technology, or at least hiding their use of it. I imagine it's still used to streamline processes more often than the Steam disclosures would suggest, but, for the most part, generative AI art and writing rarely appear in our games. Even Arc Raiders is phasing out the jarring AI voice actors.

If AI-generated art is noticed in games, the stock response from developers is that it was a placeholder asset that wasn't meant to ship with the finished game. This makes no sense. Placeholder assets are meant to stand out, are meant to have gigantic red letters reading CHANGE ME specifically so that they don't accidentally get used in the final product.

Take Slay the Spire 2, for instance. Currently in early access, its existing crop of placeholder assets are crude stick figures. They look silly, they don't match the art style, they're crying out to be changed before the full release. Josh Sawyer, the veteran director of classics like Fallout: New Vegas, shared some placeholder assets from Pentiment on social media in light of the Crimson Desert excuse. From stick figures to jpegs of Disney characters, these placeholders deliberately stood out from their surroundings so that they didn't accidentally end up in the final game.

Even if using generative AI to create concept or placeholder art was a viable alternative to drawing crude stick figures in MS Paint - which we've already established it isn't - it doesn't make much sense to use the technology at this stage. Concept art and early ideas are supposed to flow from the creative freedom of your artists. It's a dynamic, exciting part of the process that will only be hindered by using a model that is trained solely on stuff that already exists. 

Any artist of any discipline will tell you that ideas are the easy part. It's the execution, the act of doing, that makes art difficult. So why replace this easy piece of development, and the inherent creativity of the artists and writers you employ, with an AI model? It doesn't make sense.

This also doesn't mitigate the myriad problems with the technology. Using AI during the development process still harms the environment. It still puts pressure on the data centers that pose health risks to nearby communities.

And that's if we're being charitable, if we take the developers at their word. That this was a mistake, and wasn't meant to release. A cynic might suggest that studios are happy to ship AI assets and just hope players won't notice. Perhaps that's why so many of these culprits don't have any Steam disclosures until they're caught. If you can say one thing for Owlcat, it's at least being open and honest about how it's using the tech.

At the end of the day, placeholder assets sometimes ship. Despite Sawyer's best efforts, Pentiment shipped with 'Lorem ipsum" placeholder text in the final game, although with the amount of Latin in that game, it didn't look too out of place. The difference is, if a stick man appears where it shouldn't, players turn it into a meme and share a laugh with the developers. If it's a piece of AI-generated artwork, it will be instantly labelled as slop - groveling apologies ensue.

When you're only inhibiting your artists' creativity and risking ridicule, you've got to wonder if it's worth using the technology at all?