NTE Developers forget to remove AI watermark

[u/YourLilyInaPot]

In their newest update 1.3, a new area has been added, along with it came new fishing spots and fishing catches.

One of their fishing assets contains the watermark from Doubao (豆包) a popular Chinese AI chatbot assistant with image and video generation powered by Seedance (Bytedance).

This has sparked heated debate amongst Chinese players, while not hardly criticizing the use of AI they do make fun of the fact that Doubao’s AI image generation watermark comes from the free version of the app, with many comments calling them cheap, criticizing their carelessness and questioning the real reason behind their low production costs.

To quote one of the comments:

“AI is fine, but using Doubao is just funny. The free version no less.”

Other comments talk about AI across the Chinese gaming industry, how other companies such as Hoyoverse and Netease have self-developed AI tools while Hotta Studio uses an AI chatbot assistant.

To put it on perspective, asking Doubao to generate an image is very similar to asking ChatGPT.

Quote from another comment:

“Doubao Doubao, help me generate a game asset of a purple crowned seahorse.”

I’ll add that the Chinese community already knew about the extent of AI usage in Neverness to Everness, though they weren’t expecting to see Doubao of all things.

As of this post, the watermark has been removed with the asset remaining the same otherwise.

[u/-Coconut_Friend-]

I wonder how the Chinese community reacts to the AI stuff given how they are much more tolerant of AI compared to the west

[u/Optimal_Wedding5742 → u/-Coconut_Friend-]

they clowning the game for using free version not even the paid version

[u/Typical-Opposite-989 → u/Optimal_Wedding5742]

clowning the game for using free version not even the paid version

HAHAHAHAHA

[u/ShuricanGG → u/-Coconut_Friend-]

[u/BusBoatBuey → u/-Coconut_Friend-]

Chinese community clowns the low quality of the game itself before discussing AI specifically. People here are too hyper-focused on the AI usage. If the game used AI and it was high-quality, then netizen rants wouldn't matter.

[u/RHS-II3 → u/BusBoatBuey]

using AI makes a game bad automatically because devs or higherups that don't care enough to pay artists or writers will always produce bad content actually

[u/Sohuli → u/RHS-II3]

Chances are that all big game studios do use it. Just better at hiding it.

[u/ffloofers → u/Sohuli]

Which is why you should no longer support large game studios.

Saying that, there’s a wealth of games that have already been produced. There’s really no reason to take the chance of supporting AI at all.

[u/Sohuli → u/ffloofers]

I get what you're saying, but you can't reasonably ask the average consumer to give up their favorite games on the off-chance that game's studio is using AI.

[u/ffloofers → u/Sohuli]

??

Yes you can. It is perfectly reasonable to expect human beings to have human morals - if the product you’re being shown has a high likelihood of having contributed to the destruction of the planet and the desecration of the arts, you have a moral obligation to reject it.

The desire to consoom should not override that.

[u/Sohuli → u/ffloofers]

Again, on the off-chance that they're using AI?

We're not even talking about a guarantee here. It's not a reasonable request for the average consumer.

[u/Haemon18 → u/RHS-II3]

Artists and writers use ai too, everyone does. They simply do a better job at not making it obvious.

[u/Gargooner → u/-Coconut_Friend-]

They generally doesn't care about the AI usage. Since a lot of big companies use it one way or another. But even NetEase i believe develop their own AI and use their own dataset.

They're however clowning NTE for using free version of publicly available one.