Ubisoft gives terrible excuse after its caught using AI in Anno 117: Pax Romana

The long-awaited and positively reviewed strategy game Anno 117: Pax Romana is here, and it’s full of AI art!

Fans of strategy video games have been excited for the arrival of Anno 117: Pax Romana — they already started making mods the day the game came out. The previous Anno 1800 was a well-loved game, especially for its hand-drawn artwork. That makes it all the more lame that AI has taken over so much since the first game’s 2019 launch.

For the past day, gamers have pointed out some very telling AI art throughout the game, especially in the backgrounds and loading screens. These images are meant to look hand-made like the original game, but gamers are too skeptical to accept things at face value — they noticed the blurred and pixelated portions of the “art” and immediately clocked it.

This forced Ubisoft to respond. And admit to what they’ve done.

Ubisoft responds to AI art backlash in Anno 117: Pax Romana

There are a ton of images that are very clearly questionable, but Ubisoft has decided to respond to just one single image of a banquet hall. With blurry, distorted faces and just all-around wonky details, it’s not really something Ubisoft could deny.

“This image was a placeholder asset that unintentionally slipped through our review process,” Ubisoft stated.

This excuse would almost fool a lead paint-riddled boomer, but it doesn’t really work when you take into account how there are tons of AI images used throughout the game. Are those all placeholders?

“With Anno 117: Pax Romana being our most ambitious Anno yet, we’ve assembled the largest team of artists ever for the franchise and to help meet the project’s unique scope, they use AI tools for iteration, prototyping, and exploration,” Ubisoft continued.

Yikes.

The image has since been replaced by a new banquet illustration that appears to be real. But what about the others? They’re still in the game and look terrible.

While I don’t expect AI to never be used by companies that want to save money, I moreso want to see it used for organizational and behind-the-scenes purposes, not to take the role of artists, voice actors, and writers.