Black Ops 7’s Awful AI Use Is A Watershed Moment

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7

Xbox

The state of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’s launch is a bit nebulous, with early viewership and playercount numbers we can see indicate that it is either lagging behind games like ARC Raiders and Battlefield 6, or at least those games are giving them a serious challenge this year.

But yesterday, a different sort of story emerged, one that features the most obvious use of genAI I’ve seen in a game, much less a game of this size, and a follow-up statement that doubles down on its use. It feels like a potential tipping point moment for gaming, one that perhaps was always inevitable.

The issue in question is that a number of Black Ops 7 Calling Cards, earned cosmetics for display in the game, are very obviously created by AI, many in the viral “Studio Ghibli” style that was a trend for a while, which Ghibli was not amused by.

Without question, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is the most egregious use of AI I’ve seen in a mainstream game, and this is the mainstream game with a budget multiples higher than other series. And they’re choosing to cut corners by generating Calling Cards with a few AI prompts rather than pay artists for those slots. I am surprised they issued a statement about this at all, but after this went viral, here’s what they said:

“Like so many around the world, we use a variety of digital tools, including AI tools, to empower and support our teams to create the best gaming experiences possible for our players. Our creative process continues to be led by the talented individuals in our studios.”

The question, of course, is how AI Calling Cards “support our teams to create the best gaming experiences possible” for Call of Duty players. This comes in the wake of ARC Raiders, Call of Duty’s main competitor, also using genAI, but in that case for voicework, where VOs gave permission to have their voices reworked using AI for infinite varieties of lines. Still controversial, but far from using extremely obvious AI Studio Ghibli-style art for a cosmetic like this.

It’s just brazen now, and the question becomes…does it matter? If one of the biggest franchises in the world can use extremely obvious AI art, and then say effectively, “so what?” where does this take the industry next? We’re now in a situation where two of the biggest games right now are both using genAI in some form, and video games may be slipping into the larger tidal wave of AI automation.

There are some uses of AI processes behind the scenes to help make gamers more efficiently or more quickly that are not really the same thing as what we’re seeing here, met with few protests, or even broad acceptance. But once you dip into genAI painting over creatives like artists or VOs, that’s something else entirely.

I don’t think anything happens here. I think Call of Duty leaves these Calling Cards in place as a way to see if this blows over in a few days. The larger story is about the performance of Black Ops 7 as a whole, and that will not hinge on using AI in these areas of the game. There is a large-scale rejection of “AI slop” on places like Twitter, but until the mainstream, less-online audience agrees, this will only get worse, based on what we’re seeing here.

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