It’s no secret that the emergence of AI has changed the digital media landscape, and it’s certainly making its way into video games as well. The Alters, developed by 11 Bit Studios, became the latest subject of controversy when players discovered the use of AI assets in the game. Specifically, if you take a look at the computer terminal in the command center within the mobile base in The Alters, you can read two small lines of text that say, “Sure, here’s a revised version focusing purely on scientific and astronomical data,” and “Sure! Here is the translated text into Brazilian Portuguese.”
It’s the second bit that’s drawn the most ire from fans. Not only does The Alters feature text that was clearly generated from ChatGPT, it’s also evidence that the developers had used AI for translation work — something that you’d normally pay translators and localization specialists to do. This can be a bit of a sore point. Back in 2016, Campo Santo came under fire for an announcement where they expressed enthusiasm for players to submit translations for Firewatch in their own native languages simply because they didn’t have the resources to hire a third-party to do the work. I’d reported on the issue back during my Twinfinite days, and also spoke with various folks in the translation/localization space. Mind you, this was pre-AI, so you can imagine how bad the criticism was for The Alters.
To 11 Bit Studios’ credit, though, the team put out a response on social media to address the criticism quickly. The developers explained that AI-generated assets were indeed used in the development of The Alters, but they were always meant to be placeholders to be removed in the final product. 11 Bit goes on to state that some of these slipped through due to oversight on their part, and the team is now conducting a thorough sweep of the game to make sure everything is in order.
With regards to the translation backlash, 11 Bit cited “extreme time constraints” for their decision not to involve their translation partners and opted to use AI to translate bits of text to get the game ready for launch. That being said, it was always their intention to have those partners work on localization hotfixes after the game was out, and those patches are now being worked on and deployed.
Finally, 11 Bit Studios admits that this was the wrong call, and they simply should have been upfront about the usage of AI. All in all, it’s a very solid, transparent response that I personally appreciated. From what I can tell, the player response seems to be largely receptive as well, though you’ll always have a few naysayers who think you can’t really call yourself “transparent” once you’ve gotten caught. Either way, the mistakes are being rectified and that’s all we can ask for, right?
The Alters is now available on PC and consoles.
