Cutting corners over the holidays, Xbox used naff AI artwork to promote its indie game offerings on social media. As expected, fans have not taken kindly to the generative filth, criticising the multi-billion dollar company for using the controversial technology.
Posted on Twitter on December 27th, ID@Xbox tweeted an AI generated image of cartoon characters sledding around the Xbox logo in the snow with the caption: “Walking in a indie wonderlaaand. What were your favorite indie games of the year?”
Fans immediately noticed the use of AI generation for the accompanying image on the Xbox post. Issues ranging from teeth instead of lips to extra limbs to skies turning into fishing lines can be seen in abundance, and fans and indie game developers turned against the company for its shoddy work.
“Nothing says ‘we don’t care about indie developers’ like using AI,” said Twitter artist NecroKuma3. “ If you can’t hire an artist to do advertising, I highly doubt you’ll do it with independent developers.”
As the brand that’s purpose is to interact with indie developers and promote their hard work, the use of artificial intelligence to promote the indie game industry is an awfully tone deaf move for Microsoft’s gaming brand. Unfortunately, at this point, many expected the use of AI by the company.
As it so happens, Microsoft is one of the biggest supporters of artificial intelligence at the time of writing. Its second-rate search engine Bing has already been augmented with annoying AI assistants, and the company is even trying to add AI art features into Microsoft Paint, because nothing is sacred.
While Xbox puts on a friendly face for indie developers, its parent company is huge on artificial intelligence. While games like Hi-Fi Rush, our best Xbox Game of the Year winner, have been praised on the back of their incredibly artistry, Microsoft seems more enthusiastic about exploring artistry for quick profitable gains.
With NFTs already thankfully dead in the water, maybe AI generated art can go the same way. After all, what’s the point in art without a purpose, message and care?
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