What is your position on studious using AI in game development?

This is probably little bit of rant, but I am really curious to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Disclaimer: I am talking about the thing called “generative AI” here, and not LLM models used in software development or in media postproduction, obviously this is different things which have different implications.

What prompted me to this discussion is recent PlayStation post where they said that they use AI tools for their productions, such as “Mockingbird is an internal tool that generates facial animations from performance capture data in a fraction of the traditional time.

It was already adopted at Naughty Dog and San Diego Studio, including on shipped games. San Diego Studio just released MLB The Show 26.”

And I was waiting for new Naughty Dog game, but knowing that they used AI in facial animations really bothers me since this is one of their most prominent fields.

I tried to discuss this on subreddits for actual game only for my posts being shortly deleted.
One of the responses were:

“This is machine learning tool that they gave motion capture data too.

Machine learning has been used in games for decades about now that people dislike any mention of AI they throw all logic out the window when AI is being used.

Do you think Naughty Dog would just plug something into a system, generate it and then just leave it despite its quality? Out of everything we know of Naughty Dog you think thats something theyre capable of?”

And I‘m thinking that maybe I am overreacting. Maybe it doesn’t matter if game is good at the end.

Somewhat similar responses usually happened when people found AI generated assets in the games, like background artwork or flavor text - people jumping in defense of developers because ”it’s just background”, “it doesn’t matter”, “they don’t use AI in actual important parts of the game”.

It is mostly universal from my experience online that people have strong feelings about generative AI and it would be highly unpopular if game from reputable developer would openly use generative AI for its visuals, music or voice acting, but I feel like game studios are silently moving goalposts and testing the waters trying to learn when something is still OK with consumers and when it’s already too much.

They say that they won’t use AI for anything creative, but to enhance performance or quality of visuals, but I am just question when enhancing stops and it‘s actual generated content?

When all the talk started about AI replacing all creatives and corporations started to use generated assets in book illustrations, slop games started clogging digital stores etc I vowed never buy games using generated content even if it meant not to buy any game produced after 2025, but now I feel like companies doing anything to muddle the waters, pushing message that everyone using AI tools, or it‘s not for creative port but for code only, or we train models on our own content etc. And fans of this studios will buy these games anyway even if they think themselves to be “anti AI”.

What do you feel about it? Will you still buy games which fall on this border lines?