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/omfgkevin]

Yep, they even had AI generated images of characters like Nanally/Mint (for ""placeholder"" banners). Which I don't buy because why tf would you GENERATE an image as a placeholder, which takes more time than you know, just USING AN IMAGE you already have from concept art as a ""placeholder""?

There's literally no reason to generate a new image to just use as a placeholder vs placing something there which you SHOULD have of characters you mde.

[u/dearth_of_passion → u/omfgkevin]

I thought that the banner image thing specifically wasn't real, but some fan of another game making images themselves and claiming they were in the game?

But the video clip that was previously shown at the start of Pink Paws Heist was legit AI generated and in the game.

[u/drywallsmasher → u/dearth_of_passion]

The banner images weren’t fan made. They were in the technical test.

[u/yuuki_w → u/drywallsmasher]

those people dont like facts they only wanna hate on a game even if they use unrelevant stuff.

[u/yuuki_w → u/omfgkevin]

the ai art of the chars was in the very first betas. But i get it doesnt fit your narrative.

[u/C44S4D → u/omfgkevin]

They had a reason though, they needed to show a 10 pull demo to obtain the license and at that point the gacha system wasn't developed. The placeholders you saw were datamined and were not part of any implemented system in the game facing the players.