Understandable AI paranoia has inspired a developer to change the handcrafted character art in its upcoming sim: 'They look a bit AI'

Generative AI sucks for so many reasons, from its impact on the environment to the skyrocketing cost of RAM, but in my day-to-day life the most frustrating side effect is that whenever I look at an image online, a piece of art, or even a video, I have to wonder if someone's trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

We've had to become extra vigilant, paranoid even, to keep out AI slop. There's even a subreddit dedicated to people asking, "Is this AI?" And this is why Transport Fever 3 developer Urban Games is making some changes to its sim's character art.

Transport Fever 3's eight-mission campaign is full of chatty characters who dole out tasks, appearing as static pieces of character art with full voice acting. The instant I saw the mayor of New Orleans in the game's first mission, I experienced that feeling of revulsion that I often feel whenever I see some AI-generated art.

He was shiny, uncanny and weirdly smooth. There were none of the imperfections usually associated with AI art—no inconsistencies, no blurry patterns on his clothes, no freakishly malformed hands or teeth. But he, and all the other characters, still had an aesthetic that so many pieces of AI-generated character art end up with—and it was offputting.

Urban Games' publishing manager Nico Heini is adamant that generative AI was not used for any part of Transport Fever 3. "We are a 100% handmade studio," he told me. "So we do not have any AI in any part of the game. Something that is very, very important to us is that everything is handcrafted by our artists."

But I was not the only person to be put off by the character art. "In the last beta test, where we have shown the campaign for the very first time, we have been made aware by some players that the character models we are currently using for the conversations in the campaign itself, that they look a bit AI."

Urban Games is now making changes to rectify this, he said. "This is something that is very important to us that this gets addressed, because we don't want any results of AI in our game at all."

The character portraits are "currently being reworked", and Urban Games will be replacing them with "something better that does not leave any doubt in terms of if they are AI or not".

While some studios and publishers have gone all-in on AI, like Krafton, which boasts that it is now an "AI-first company", it's reassuring to see other developers go the extra mile, not just taking a stand against AI, but making sure that there are no doubts that its games are handmade.