Depends on the exact scenario.

We’re also dealing with language differences. English is not the developer’s first language. What may seem a clear sentence to a native speaker, could be easily misinterpreted/mistranslated to something similar, but different enough that the answer changes.

It seems that the AI use was early in development, and limited to temporary placeholders that were going to be replaced. Since they were patched out within days of release, that seems to imply they already had replacement assets on hand, they were just missed during final checks before release.

The answer from the devs also changed prior to the awards show that implies that they may have had an updated interpretation of the qualification question or answer. If they thought the question was about AI use in the final product, then accidentally missing a placeholder swap shouldn’t be disqualifying. Likewise, early experimentation with the tech and then deciding not to use it probably should not disqualify either. But if the qualification is a hard yes/no with absolutely no context or consideration whatsoever, then that’s a different outcome, and hence them clarifying for the awards team.

Personally I think the hard limit without any room for consideration or interpretation is a shit qualification. Especially considering that isn’t really the case for most awards. Look at the definition of “indie” for example. There’s a half dozen different interpretations people have ranging from having to be self published, avoiding just large publishers, or just the publisher not having creative influence. That’s a lot of interpretation comparatively.

We’re not talking about a development team of 100+ artists here and a company forcing them to work 80 hour crunch weeks leading up to launch like much of the industry.

I don’t know exactly how their 30 or so team members break down for specialties, but I’m willing to bet we’re talking maybe 5 asset artists. Making the tens or hundreds of thousands of concept art pieces, and in game assets. Their time is finite and much better spent working on final assets than making placeholders that will just be replaced later. Experimenting with AI and dripping a placeholder in during month 6 that never gets touched again, and the final asset is made but missed when swapping them in at the end of development isn’t exactly damning

Literally removing work from a human(concept artist)

It’s not really “removing” work from a human, it’s utilizing the time of a very small and limited team more wisely. The AI didn’t replace a human, there was never going to be an additional person hired just to make that placeholder, at worst it just let the existing artists spend more time making final assets.

It was released with the original placeholder AI assets, but patched out within 5 days. It’s pretty clear that they just missed replacing those assets prior to release.

I don’t know exactly which assets, or exactly how many… but from several article it seems one of them was a newspaper only used in the prologue, that no one would notice without directly looking at it up close, which 99.9% of people would never do, and could easily be overlooked doing final testing for game breaking issues prior to release.

And the failure to properly disclose could easily be explained by them messing around. Early in development, deciding not to use AI, and then forgetting about it. Which also explains it being left in for release accidentally. Updated assets were clearly made, just never replaced.

The disqualification had nothing to do with the assets being there for the release, it was solely about development as mentioned in every statement from the awards. Meaning even if it hadn’t been there at release, they still would have been disqualified. Hard criteria like that which disqualifies any sort of context or consideration is not fair. Especially when we’re talking about cutting edge technologies that teams will obviously be experimenting with before making decisions.

Yes. It was reported basically everywhere.

https://gamerant.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-no-doge-parry-completion-all-hit-run-feat/

Want to move that goalpost again?

Cool… Generative AI used for placeholders during development that are replaced by actual artist work for the release is the definition of responsibly.

Given these assets were replaced within days of release here… Definitely seems like placeholders that were just missed during the final checks before release.

And yet someone completed the game without parrying a single time.

They didn’t just replace the art later. It was intended to be placeholder art from the beginning. And was replaced 5 days after release. That tells me that they just missed replacing those temporary assets among tens of thousands of assets before release.

Using GenAI for something temporary that’s not intended to be final seems like the perfect use case for it. Especially on a small team where artist time is much better spent working on the final assets.

Rushed CGI is different, doesn’t matter if it’s bleeding edge or not.

Agreed, the assets did make it to production, but were replaced in a patch 5 days later. That definitely seems like it was placeholders that just got missed. Which happens, especially for a new small studio releasing their first game.

GenAI being used for temporary placeholders is arguably a correct use case for it. Especially with a smaller development team. If you have a limited number of artists, having them spend time crafting unique placeholders that will be replaced is a poor use of their time and talents that would otherwise be spent working on final art that will actually be in the released game. That is a 100% valid use case scenario for it, as long as the assets are replaced for the launch. And missing a few and fixing that within a week is entirely understandable, not something they should be indicted for.

There is some concern about the exact wording I’ve seen in various articles. Some say that Sandfall told the awards that GenAI wasn’t used in the development, but the articles don’t use a specific quote on their side, and then later saying it was used for placeholder assets. They seem to imply that Sandfall lies about the use to qualify, then later came clean. I’m wondering if that is simply miscommunication, potentially language issues, about the final game not using GenAI. Just because people speak multiple languages, that doesn’t mean that they understand nuanced differences in meaning when not using their native language. I can see the difference between the final game release and overall development being misunderstood depending on the exact wording used.

That’s exactly the takeaway I got from it as well.

It seems most likely that those were placeholders that were supposed to be replaced before release but were missed. Once they realized that some were missing, they got them replaced and pushed the update.

GenAI being used for placeholder stuff is arguably the perfect use case, especially for small studios without massive art teams.

There’s a decent chunk of people that watch them solely for the bleeding edge CGI technology.

Others that like those kinds of stories. Nothing in the story is unique. Avatar, Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves, and numerous others are all fundamentally the same story told in different ways. There’s a reason these stories keep being told and people still like watching them.

And the $550 is the same price that model already was. That price has not changed since it launched.

Oh this is going to do nothing to make TikTok better in any way, or cause it’s downfall.

It just lets Trump’s friends make money from it now.

I gotta agree. My 5900X, 32GB of DDR4 and 9070XT should keep me good for the foreseeable future anyway. Would be nice to have 64GB though if only to have more options.

Only downside is that I can’t easily upgrade my small home server/NAS which only has 16GB in it. It doesn’t really need more, and I can’t imagine more services beyond the ones I have on it currently, but it would be nice to have more space there to expand if I want just in case. It was built in microATX case and consumer board though for space and reusing existing components laying around, so only 2 slots which means replacing not adding sticks to upgrade unfortunately.

*Demand includes an undisclosed amount of supply earmarked for AI firms, with no set price, or buy guarantee and could change at any point in time. But they gave a pinky promise and have billions of dollars in funds that could disappear overnight, so it’s legit.

Not only the setting off, but any sort of behind the scenes stuff related to it disabled as well. No automatic updating, no background processes to “keep it ready, just in case”. Do that when it’s enabled.

It’s for the default search, but it also has the side benefit of ensuring a secondary browser with decent market share that’s not Chromium-based they can point to claiming they’re not a monopoly.

Most small scale home and business NAS deployments are still going to use spinning disks, not SSD due to the lower cost per GB and the fact that HDD arrays already have enough speed for most small scale use cases.

My disk array at home gets close to SATA SSD speeds in most workloads already, and it’s plenty fast enough for anything I can throw at it.

There are still a lot of devices in use that don’t support NVMe, especially older portable devices. And there are plenty of boards with M.2 slots that only support SATA, not NVMe, over some or all of those slots. It’s one of the areas that board manufacturers often use to cut corners and reduce costs.

Getting a separate PCIe card is easy enough for a desktop, even a low profile one, but that’s not an option across the board.

That being said, SATA SSD production was already probably getting near being dramatically reduced because NVMe is so prevalent now.

Did we actually expect that silicon valley and their ilk required warrants? Or even verified who was asking?

This isn’t news to anyone that’s paid any sort of attention for the last 20+ years.