It wasn’t long after Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launched last year that fans started noticing something weird: a steady stream of loading screens from paid bundles with conspicuous errors that suggested they were AI slop. The most egregious example was a Christmas-themed Santa bundle that included art for a six-fingered zombie. It took months before publisher Activision even began officially acknowledging its use of AI due to Steam’s disclosure rules, and the company still hasn’t come clean about how AI is used in its games or what the boundaries are.
Now the company is gearing up for the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Can fans expect to see more AI slop sprinkled across the sprawling live-service multiplayer shooter? Treyarch associate creative director, Miles Leslie, was recently asked to clarify the team’s position on the controversial subject. “We live in a world now, where there are AI tools,” he told IGN. “I think our official statement we said last year, around Black Ops 6, is that everything that goes into the game is touched by the team a hundred percent. We have generative AI tools to help us, but none of that goes in-game.”
How does he square that with the fact that bits and pieces of AI-generated slop seem to have slipped into the game anyway? “I’ll say it has by accident,” he told IGN. “And that was never the intention. We’ve come out and been very clear that we use these as tools to help the team, but they do not replace any of the fantastic team members we have that are doing the final touches and building that content to put it in the game.”
Leslie added that the goal is to “streamline” development, not to “replace” any developers. The thousands laid off at Microsoft over the past two years, including staff across various Call of Duty studios, may feel differently. An investigation by Wired last year claimed Activision was already encouraging its developers to use AI for generating concept art, and I’ve spoken to several artists in the game industry who worry game artists will be the first on the chopping block as studios look to cut costs amid ballooning AAA budgets. A modern Call of Duty likely costs as much as $1 billion to make over the lifetime of the game.
And that six-fingered Santa zombie? Still in the game. IGN asked Leslie why it hasn’t been removed. “Not my department,” he said. “But I know that the team is actively looking at that stuff, making sure that it is not shipped, and how we fix it.”
