11 Bit Studios, the Polish developer behind the recently released survival game The Alters, has come under fire for its usage of generative AI text and translation in the game, with the studio promising an update to replace these assets with handcrafted ones.
The accusations first started last week, when players spotted what appeared to be AI-generated text on a screen in the game’s Command Center. The image in question, which was posted on the game’s Reddit thread, featured a line of text on screen which read “Sure, here’s a revised version focusing purely on scientific and astronomical data:”, followed by the Captain’s log, suggesting that the entire log was generated using prompts and AI, and that the developers forgot to delete the AI’s initial response.
This wasn’t the only such instance, however, as players of other language versions also pointed out similar occurrences, such as a user on BlueSky named Heitor De Paola, who posted a screenshot of the game in Portuguese, which featured the line “Sure! Here is the translated text into Brazilian Portuguese.”
These incidents definitely suggest that 11 Bit Studios used generative AI to not only produce lines of text for some in-game assets, but also for localisation. To complicate things further, The Alters does not include any disclosure on its Steam game page stating the use of such AI tools, something that Valve has made mandatory on their site.
In response, 11 Bit Studios issued a statement on its social media channels, explaining that such assets “were used strictly as temporary WIPs during the development process”. With regards to the AI-generated localisations, the team further explained that these were “added at the final stage of development” and that due to time constraints, the team chose to use AI instead of their usual translation partners. To this end, the team also promised a hotfix for the game that is underway to replace the AI-generated lines with professional translations.
This latest controversy comes one week after another studio, Frontier Developments, came under fire for AI usage in Jurassic World Evolution 3, which used generative technology to create certain portraits in the game, leading to the team opting to remove such content after fan backlash.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
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