AI Palworld accusations are currently based on vibes, a social deduction game, and the CEO's past tweets about machine-generated fakémon

Palworld has come under fire for its bootleg Pokémon aesthetic, with some commenters evencross-referencing models like amateur detectives wading into a crime scene. While the claims of straight-up model ripping are unlikely (even if the designs are very clearly derivative) another strain of discussion has emerged: Is the funny Pokémon-meets-survival genre game AI?

Permit me to put on my deerstalker hat and do my best Sherlock Holmes impression—I'd include a pipe, but my smoke alarms are very sensitive. The evidence (as initially pointed out by imZaytri on Twitter/X, though I should point out that they don't consider this concrete evidence) in favour of this accusation is as follows.

Exhibit A my dear Watson: In 2021, PocketPair's current CEO Takuro Mizobe made a set of tweets showing astonishment at AI-generated 'fakémon', after Buzzfeed's data scientist Max Woolf created a ream of the little monsters with machine learning. 

My favourite is this one, which looks like a crime against god that is begging for the sweet release of death.

Exhibit B: PocketPair has used AI generation in its video games before. 2022's AI Impostor uses an image generator as the basis for a Jackbox-like social deduction game. Everyone generates a picture using AI for an exhibition, but the impostor doesn't know the theme—which does feel like it's taking the fun out of a group drawing game, but hey. 

Lastly, Exhibit C: Mizobe's blog post detailing the production of the game describes an artist with miraculous turnaround times on the design of the game's 100+ Pals. Granted, this speculation is based on a machine translation that shifts said artist's pronouns around more than AI software adds fingers. 

The issue is, trying to determine whether Palworld uses generative AI from this evidence alone is the gaming equivalent of drawing red string across a corkboard—nothing here's substantive evidence, it's… well, it's vibes. 

A couple of points that run counter to the narrative. Firstly, Steam's AI