Players have hit out at The Alters developer 11 Bit Studios after AI prompts were discovered in both subtitles and flavour text in the game, intimating routine use of large language models (LLMs) without disclosure.
I really don’t get the people mentioned in the article expressing the sentiment that their use of AI isn’t a big deal because it’s (so far, anyway) only evident in a few, less important spots… For one, you don’t know for sure where all it’s been used, only what’s been caught so far - which it’s been out for (I think several) weeks now already and we’re just now finding these instances without looking for them, who knows what else there might be - secondly, and infinitely more importantly imo, is the much larger issue of them not disclosing their use of generative AI at all to begin with.
Yeah, the non-disclosure is most telling IMO. 11bit is an experienced development studio, it is not credible for them to not know about Steam’s AI disclosure requirement.
Thus, to me, there are three possible explanations: They either decided to hide the use of genAI because they were aware that disclosing its use would hurt their reputation. Or they decided that it was “no big deal” and were willing to risk gambling with their reputation and their relationship with Valve. Or they will blame this on outsourcing and freelance contractors, which they then failed to supervise and/or instruct properly.
Either option makes them look bad and extremely sloppy at best.
Shit, it’s disrespectful enough to me as a consumer, let alone whatever Steam shit they’re in violation of lol I didn’t even buy it, thankfully, just grabbed it on GP after enjoying the demo awhile back, but I’m uninstalling it rn, actually, cuz I’m principled and shit
