Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 appears to feature AI-generated art.

3 hours ago7 min read2 comments

By all appearances, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 features a not insignificant amount of AI-generated art, Kotaku reports. The game's over 680 Calling Cards—those collectible backgrounds you earn through grinding or swiping your credit card—are the main offenders, looking like they were spat out by a ChatGPT prompt trying to mimic a knockoff Studio Ghibli.It's the kind of stuff you'd expect from a low-effort asset flip on Steam, not a flagship title with a $70 price tag slapped on it. While it's hard to say for sure that every weirdly warped face and nonsensical background element is a smoking gun, the overall vibe is just.off. It feels unpolished, like the art team was either massively rushed or someone higher up decided to cut corners.And honestly, Activision isn't even really denying it. Right there on the Black Ops 7 Steam page, buried in the small print, is a disclosure confirming the devs used 'generative AI tools to help develop some in-game assets.' When Kotaku pressed them for a statement, the company gave the classic corporate non-answer, calling AI just one of the 'digital tools' used to 'empower and support our teams. ' Translation: they used it, and they're not sorry.It's a calculated move, really. Using AI, or even AI art touched up by a human, saves a ton of money and time during development, especially for a content-heavy game like this that needs to churn out hundreds of cosmetic items.But that cost-cutting comes at a different price: the soul of the game. For the players who grind for hours to unlock a calling card, it's a slap in the face to receive something that feels generic and algorithmically generated rather than crafted with intention.This whole situation casts a weird shadow over what should be a massive moment for the franchise. Black Ops 7 is the first Call of Duty to launch day-one on Xbox Game Pass, which is Microsoft's big play to justify that recent, painful price hike for the subscription service.But instead of buzzing about that, the community is dissecting janky artwork. And let's be real, the AI art might be an aesthetic disappointment, but the game's always-online campaign that you can't even pause? That's a genuine gameplay disaster that's drawing far more ire from the core player base.It feels like we're at a crossroads for big-budget game development. Do we accept this new normal of AI-assisted, sometimes soulless, asset generation in the name of efficiency and shareholder value? Or do we push back and demand that the art in our games reflects the same level of passion and craftsmanship we expect from the gameplay? For a series as iconic as Call of Duty, which has built its reputation on a certain polish and blockbuster quality, this feels like a dangerous step toward becoming just another content factory.

#AI-generated art

#Call of Duty

#Black Ops 7

#Activision

#video game assets

#ethics

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