Mezzanine Stairs

Steam’s content survey asks developers to “disclose” any use of generative artificial intelligence. As a computer programmer, I’m fascinated by the prospect and implications of machine learning, but “disclosure” sounds like an admission of guilt.

After spending more than enough time working on artwork for the game’s poster, I decided to give generative AI a try to fill in the background. We used an image generator that we could provide with our own artwork as an input, so I don’t consider it to be cheating as much as using images generated from scratch.

Valve’s survey question made me wonder whether they are positioning in case there’s a major backlash against AI content. When we went on to share the poster on DeviantArt and were asked the same question my worry intensified, but it looks like they merely take the opportunity to promote their own AI tool.

I’ve been warned by friends that AI will be taking all of the programming jobs. In my case, if anybody has trained an AI to understand how the entire Adobe Integrated Runtime works, I’d be impressed. (Call me!) I, for one, would welcome our Flash programming overlords.

What do you think? Is an anti-AI backlash inevitable?

Happy Halloween!

P.S. The thumbnail image and video are just for fun, and shouldn’t be taken as indicative of any future art direction on our part. Fear not—Complacent is still slaving away drawing every in-game asset by hand.