Silent Hill: Ascension Developer Calls AI Accusations a "Veiled Insult"

Silent Hill: Ascension premiered last month, and there have been multiple controversies surrounding it since. The latest is an accusation that the series is being created by AI. It all started with a viral Tweet from former Giant Bomb video producer @VoidBurger, in which she pointed out some of the bizarre interactions between characters in the series. You Can't Scare Me! co-host @BobVids then discovered that Genvid's CCO Stephan Vladimir Bugaj had previously given a lecture about "massively interactive live events in which human and autonomous AI characters interact to create simulated narratives." These accusations have gotten back to Genvid, and the company's CEO Jacob Navok has now responded across multiple Tweets. In these responses, Navok claims that none of the game's writing was produced by AI. 

"Every word in Ascension was written by real people, many of whom have long-running careers in writing including Telltale titles, Pixar titles, GoW Ragnarok, Resident Evil Village and more. Across our 100,000+ words, zero are authored by LLMs or AI, and all are from dedicated work of a talented team," Navok wrote on Twitter. 

Silent Hill: Ascension's AI Experiments

In a follow-up Tweet, Navok went into much greater detail about the team's experiments with AI. According to Genvid's CEO, these tests were done in previous years, but often proved to be more of a hassle than they were worth. The experiments included "programmatically-directed scenes" but these often resulted in problems with the camera. They also tried AI for the Endure scenes, but "they would just get stuck too often." 

"Most of the test work was done in 2021. None of that work ended up being used on this or other projects. We have a team of animators working on the project, a team of writers who wrote the scripts, and narrative designers who made the choices," wrote Navok. "Suggesting otherwise is just a veiled insult to talented humans who have worked hard to create something they are proud of." 

While Navok heavily denies that AI is currently being used to produce "creative work" for Silent Hill: Ascension, he did admit some ways Genvid has been using AI. The developer was apparently using AI for chat moderation purposes, but that resulted in one of the bigger controversies that has surrounded Silent Hill: Ascension. Now, the team is just using AI "to detect offensive names for account registration." Despite Navok's Tweets, @Bobvids remains unconvinced, and has now pointed out comments from earlier this year where the Genvid CEO said that the company's projects feature AI characters. 

Silent Hill: Ascension's Chat Controversy

Immediately after Silent Hill: Ascension's release, the game's chat feature was disabled by the developers, as players filled the chat with comments that included racism and other toxicity. The chat feature has been turned off since, though Navok states that Genvid is "actively working on a new chat moderation solution" and the feature will come back "once we feel comfortable." 

Have you been following Silent Hill: Ascension? Do you think it's AI generated? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!

[H/T: PC Games N]