Square Enix says its new multiplayer party game contains AI-generated art, but don't sweat it: It's only 'about 0.01% or even less'

Just a couple weeks after Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu said it intends «to be aggressive in applying AI» to its content creation processes, the company has confirmed with VGC that its new multiplayer party shooter Foamstars does in fact use AI-generated art—but just a teeny little bit.

The presence of AI art in Foamstars was first revealed during a recent press event, during which producer Kosuke Okatani said that while most of the game was made by humans, there was a small amount of art created by Midjourney, a tool that converts text inputs into images.

«All of the core elements in Foamstars—the core gameplay, and the things that make the game enjoyable—those are all made by hand,» Okatani said. «However, we did want to experiment with AI as well. In terms of the content in the game, this makes up about 0.01% or even less, but we have dabbled in it by creating these icons in the game.»

Square Enix clarified the use of AI-generated art in Foamstars in a follow-up statement, saying it was used to create the in-game album covers for music used in the game's soundtrack.

«As developers, we’re always looking at new technologies to see how they can assist with game development,» the company said. «In this instance, we experimented with Midjourney using simple prompts to produce abstract images. We loved what was created and used them as the final album covers players will see in the game. Everything else was created entirely by our development team.»

0.01% of a game's total content isn't much, but it's enough to highlight the challenges the rise of AI presents to the game industry. Generally speaking, using AI-generated content in place of human-created work is not looked upon favorably, and game makers of all stripes have faced considerable pushback when they've tried it: System Shock remake publisher Prime Matter angered fans by released an AI-generated image of Shodan, for instance, while more recently Wizards of the Coast experienced a big backlash over the