{"id":105558,"date":"2026-06-11T12:50:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T12:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/105558\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T12:50:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T12:50:47","slug":"1666-amsterdam-developer-fesses-up-to-using-ai-assets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/105558\/","title":{"rendered":"1666: Amsterdam Developer Fesses Up To Using AI Assets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s today\u2019s<\/a> \u201cDeveloper caught using AI\u201d story! Panache Digital Games, creators of high-profile action-adventure\u00a01666: Amsterdam has taken to X to apologize after players discovered the game\u2019s use of AI in its released prologue, and has promised to have it all replaced by human-created art \u201csoon.\u201d And around and around we go.<\/p>\n

\u201cA number of people have raised questions or concerns to us about whether assets in our marketing and game use generative AI,\u201d begins a post on Panache\u2019s X account<\/a>, following a swathe of players reacting furiously to the game\u2019s prologue released to Steam shortly after its big reveal at Summer Game Fest<\/a>. \u201cWe have a dedicated team of over a dozen talented and experienced artists. With them, we looked into the assets in question and found that there were indeed some early versions of assets that made their way into the the (sic) prologue. This includes some in-game portraits and external marketing assets.\u201d<\/p>\n

A number of people have raised questions or concerns to us about whether assets in our marketing and game use generative AI.
We have a dedicated team of over a dozen talented and experienced artists. With them, we looked into the assets in question and found that there were\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 Panache Digital Games (@PanacheDGames) June 9, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

The post continues, \u201cWe are actively reviewing the assets in question. Human made versions will be released in an update dropping soon.\u201d It then concludes with a sharp gear change from passive to active voice, stating, \u201cWe own up to this oversight and apologize for any upset caused. Please be assured that the Early Access and full game will not include any assets generated by AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

If anything, the overall message to take away from moments like this is\u2014to my overly-optimistic mind\u2014a positive one. Despite the ubiquity of AI tools among programmers and developers, the gaming community is by a loud majority furious about its use and capable of causing backtracking like this once a team is caught. To be found to be using AI in a game\u2019s art is, by public decree, shameful, and the result must be mea culpa and self-flagellation, followed by having real human artists replace all the lazily plagiarized bullshit. So good!<\/p>\n

This particular apology is one of my favorites. Panache writes about the genAI appearing in 1666 as if it crawled in against the team\u2019s will, malevolent drawings that \u201cmade their way into the the\u201d game all on their own. Those dastardly AI assets! But thankfully \u201cover a dozen\u201d of their best artists are now wrangling them all into a cage. Phew!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a grim reality that genAI will be responsible for a large amount of the invisible code underneath the games we\u2019re playing, undermining the great work of programmers and coders who will be being forced by middle-managers to fix Claude\u2019s mistakes rather than hack their own from scratch, but at least with art we as players are able to spot it and call it out. There is no reason at all for AI assets to be used when prototyping a game, not least because the scratchy human-created work is a) far more fun<\/a>, and b) immediately possible to spot and replace. It\u2019s so obviously about seeing it can be gotten away with, with game after game after game \u201caccidentally\u201d leaving genAI shite in released builds. So all power to those spotting it and calling it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s today\u2019s \u201cDeveloper caught using AI\u201d story! Panache Digital Games, creators of high-profile action-adventure\u00a01666: Amsterdam has taken to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[101],"tags":[51879,248,199,200,52594],"class_list":["post-105558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-amsterdam","tag-1666-amsterdam","tag-ai","tag-amsterdam","tag-netherlands","tag-panache-digital-games"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116731564998388765","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}