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[KOTAKU] Xbox Slammed For AI-Generated Art Promoting Indie Games

Bishop89

Bishop89

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Oct 25, 2017
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kotaku

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'Tis the season to promote indie games with AI-generated junk, apparently. A Microsoft Twitter account recently posted low-effort, energy-intensive art promoting indie games on Xbox before later deleting it after getting roundly mocked by fans and developers alike.


"Walking in a indie wonderlaaand," the ID@Xbox account tweeted on December 27. "What were your favorite indie games of the year?" The post was accompanied by an AI-generated image of children sledding down a hill with a giant green Xbox logo on it.
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It looked harmless at first, but a second or third glance immediately revealed telltale AI anomalies like children maneuvering their sleds with cranks attached to nothing and fishing in the snow for presents with weird black tendrils. A man playing a gaming handheld in the center top of the image has had his top lip replaced by teeth. A child jumping through the snow appears to have a mustache. It was a really bad look considering ID@Xbox is supposed to be the human-facing team within the megacorporation championing individual creators and small independent teams.

"Bro not Xbox using ayy-eye to promote indie devs," wrote pixel artist TAHK0. "Nothing says 'we don't care about indie developers' like using AI," wrote artist NecroKuma3. " If you can't hire an artist to do advertising, I highly doubt you'll do it with independent developers." The company quietly deleted the post overnight without acknowledging the backlash. Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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View: https://twitter.com/matto_bii/status/1740122582802956620?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1740122582802956620%7Ctwgr%5E4c3bd2875ae82a706b5e6dbbaa09caf26195741b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fkotaku.com%2Fembed%2Finset%2Fiframe%3Fid%3Dtwitter-1740122582802956620autosize%3D1


Lock if old.
 
Shirkelton

Shirkelton

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Aug 20, 2020
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Eventually we're going to get to a point where AI is not only generating these posts, but also deciding to take them down and generating the apology that follows. Then the real fun begins.
 
CloseTalker

CloseTalker

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Oct 25, 2017
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releasing an image where the only clearly visible face is clearly janky as hell is pretty hilarious
 
Xeonidus

Xeonidus

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Oct 28, 2017
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Didn't microsoft dedicate billions in open AI? Of course they're going to use it. Not that it's right, mind you.

Edit: They're clearly not going to stop here either. I remember one of their execs talking up the benefits of AI for games development.
 
Arc

Arc

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Oct 25, 2017
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You'd think they'd see how shitty the AI Art is and say surely we could just pay one of the thousands and thousands of artists we employ to promote our initiative in a way that doesn't look terrible.
 
Multiverse Moo

Multiverse Moo

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Oct 25, 2017
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Xeonidus said:
Didn't microsoft dedicate billions in open AI? Of course they're going to use it. Not that it's right, mind you.

Edit: They're clearly not going to stop here either. I remember one of their execs talking up the benefits of AI for games development.
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There are lots of benefits to leveraging AI in game development. Has been for years.

This image generation stuff though? Trash
 
elenarie

elenarie

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Jun 10, 2018
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Of the infinite amount of games they could have used for this as an image, some social media account manager decided to do this stupid thing. Happy holidays. 🙃
 
Hero of Legend

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Oct 26, 2017
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I literally saw an ad tweet by MS like an hour ago promoting "what can AI do to improve your business" or something. MS are obsessed with AI, clearly. :/
 
Gavalanche

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Oct 21, 2021
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Microsoft have spent billions on AI, of course they are doing it. Everyone will eventually, they are just at the forefront. It's sucks but it is inevitable at this point.
 
J75

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Sep 29, 2018
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After they pulled that AI garbo Assasin's Creed tweet, I knew it opened the floodgates for this garbino.

This AI future gonna fucking suck so much, I hate for the day when the artifacts in AI get tougher to track.
 
Aarglefarg

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Oct 27, 2017
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Microsoft is going in big on AI, like today they promoted their number of AI-generated image and Copilot interactions. I linked to their blog post, but this data also appeared as a tab they popped up in Edge unprompted.

  • This year, Edge and Bing users engaged in more than 1.9 billion Copilot chats. That's equal to the total number of websites that existed on the internet last year!
  • And users created over 1.8 billion AI-generated images, which is 1800x more than the entire combined collection of the Louvre and Metropolitan Museum!
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blogs.windows.com

Microsoft Edge: Looking back at an unforgettable 2023

As 2023 comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment and reflect on what a remarkable period it has been. We've had a year of innovation, creativity, growth, and ushering in the era of AI – all with the goal of helping you achieve more than you eve
blogs.windows.com blogs.windows.com
 
SinnyIndonesian

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Feb 16, 2022
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That looks really awful. I can't believe some project lead or something that signs off on the image used would look at that and say "That's good enough". Maybe if they're being spiteful and trying to show some higher ups pushing for AI use that it would look bad, I guess.
 
RPGam3r

RPGam3r

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Oct 27, 2017
14,828
Fuck off MS. You make enough money to pay a damn artist to come up with something that at least makes sense when you look at it. Keeping pushing this shit and watch me get pushed away.
 
TheAvatar

TheAvatar

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Nov 4, 2017
711
its kinda funny, ai people and companies keep insisting that people will get used to this new ai art world but i feel people are getting angrier and angrier as time passes
 

PrepaidPostage

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Aug 9, 2021
434
The people that approve decisions like this are bad people.

Bing's AI says it can't be used for commercial purposes.

and Microsoft was sued two days ago by the new york times for using AI stuff without permission!

the sociopaths that run this stuff deserve to be fired.
 
RayCharlizard

RayCharlizard

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Nov 2, 2017
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I understand the frustration here. It's disappointing when a platform like ID@Xbox, which supposedly champions individual creators and independent teams, opts for AI-generated art instead of showcasing the incredible work of those very creators they claim to support. It feels like a missed opportunity to celebrate and highlight the talent within the indie gaming community.

The decision to use AI-generated art, especially when it's visibly flawed and disconnected from the spirit of indie games, can come off as tone-deaf. It's understandable that fans and developers alike would feel let down by such an approach.

Ultimately, it would be wonderful to see these platforms prioritize and uplift the authentic work of indie creators, giving them the recognition they truly deserve. The authenticity and uniqueness of indie games are their selling points, and it's a shame when promotional efforts miss the mark by resorting to AI-generated content.

Let's hope for more thoughtful and genuine promotion that truly honors the creativity and effort of indie game developers in the future.

This reply was written by ChatGPT.
 
Handsome James

Handsome James

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Aug 23, 2018
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In all seriousness, AI isn't going anywhere, and will become more prevalent in game development in the next couple of decades in various forms. This right here though was a social media tweet about nothing. I wonder how extreme reactions will be 5 years from now, or I wonder if people will begin to adapt
 
Yasumi

Yasumi

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Oct 25, 2017
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The fact that this was done to promote *indie devs* of all things is just a malicious level of irony. They could've thrown some clipart together jfc.
 
Harpoon

Harpoon

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Oct 27, 2017
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SinnyIndonesian said:
That looks really awful. I can't believe some project lead or something that signs off on the image used would look at that and say "That's good enough". Maybe if they're being spiteful and trying to show some higher ups pushing for AI use that it would look bad, I guess.
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That's one of the things that frustrates me the most. Has this tech really hypnotized marketers that much that they don't even stop and look at the horrid-looking garbage they're sending out? I'm going to join you in hoping this was someone trying to prove a point to higher-ups.
 
TripleBee

TripleBee

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Oct 30, 2017
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I mean at this point Microsoft is AI. It's what will likely propel them past Apple. Doubt they are going to back away.

But it is a bad look to promote indie games.
 
SirNinja

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Nov 17, 2017
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Kalentan said:
Pretty sure it was confirmed that the Gollum game apology was AI generated.
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The AI getting the name of the game incorrect ("The Lord of Ring: Gollum") was a slight tell.

Then someone ran it through an AI detector and it came back like a 99% match for ChatGPT lol. Nacon's contempt for its audience is absolutely stunning.

edit: I can't believe that tweet is still up. They just really don't care whatsoever...
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
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Oct 25, 2017
52,008
Had a big discussion over Christmas wherein a guy who I was meeting for the first time argued that AI destroying jobs was okay and we don't have to care about it while basically everyone else at the table was at some level of agreement that the AI, and emerging technologies in general, cause a lot of damage specifically because they are utilized by immoral business interests which are specifically seeking the subvert any responsibilities they have to benefit others, including their own employees.
 
Strings

Strings

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Oct 27, 2017
33,033
Iunno, there's nothing surprising about Microsoft posting an AI image as it's a huge pillar of their company atm. I don't like it but it's unsurprising.
carlsojo said:
AI generated forum posts discussing
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www.resetera.com

I trained an AI on thousands of ResetEra thread *conversations* and it created hot gaming shitposts

You may remember a few months ago I trained an AI to create ResetEra threads titles using my textgenrnn framework. In February, OpenAI released their GPT-2 framework which generates uncannily good outputs. They open sourced a smaller model, and I am currently working on a wrapper to make it easy...
www.resetera.com www.resetera.com

simpsons-its-been-done.png
 
Scottoest

Scottoest

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Feb 4, 2020
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It's pretty well-documented that Microsoft are all-in on leveraging AI across all sorts of things they sell and services they offer.

Regarding this specifically, I suspect it was just a social media person getting an image to post instead of using pre-existing artwork.
 
Shoot

Shoot

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Oct 25, 2017
5,482
This feels like making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Aarglefarg said:
Microsoft is going in big on AI, like today they promoted their number of AI-generated image and Copilot interactions. I linked to their blog post, but this data also appeared as a tab they popped up in Edge unprompted.



blogs.windows.com

Microsoft Edge: Looking back at an unforgettable 2023

As 2023 comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment and reflect on what a remarkable period it has been. We've had a year of innovation, creativity, growth, and ushering in the era of AI – all with the goal of helping you achieve more than you eve
blogs.windows.com blogs.windows.com
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This. An image generated by a social media worker with Bing Chat over the holidays is hardly worth an outrage over stuff like this happening at a global scale.
PrepaidPostage said:
The people that approve decisions like this are bad people.

Bing's AI says it can't be used for commercial purposes.

and Microsoft was sued two days ago by the new york times for using AI stuff without permission!

the sociopaths that run this stuff deserve to be fired.
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Chill out.
 
Stath

Stath

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Mar 4, 2022
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Shoot said:
This feels like making a mountain out of a mole hill.

This. An image generated by a social media worker with Bing Chat over the holidays is hardly worth an outrage over stuff like this happening at a global scale.

Chill out.
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It's embarrassing and insulting. No.
 
j7vikes

j7vikes

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Handsome James said:
In all seriousness, AI isn't going anywhere, and will become more prevalent in game development in the next couple of decades in various forms. This right here though was a social media tweet about nothing. I wonder how extreme reactions will be 5 years from now, or I wonder if people will begin to adapt
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Like everything else I fear it will just become accepted for the most part. I hope I'm wrong but thats what tends to happen with a lot of anti worker technology.
 
KezayJS1

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Apr 25, 2021
2,188
Hero of Legend said:
I literally saw an ad tweet by MS like an hour ago promoting "what can AI do to improve your business" or something. MS are obsessed with AI, clearly. :/
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They literally are planning to integrate AI tech into Office and the implementation is legitimately cool. Of course, they're all about it. For better and for worse unfortunately.
 
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