Layoffs :(

[Boris Gudenuf]

That may be as much a problem of the prompt engineer as it is the AI itself though. There's a lot you can do this days to get a generative AI to give you good stuff. I would imagine with the scale of historical literature from journals etc. stored online now that it could give some good answers if directed well. But equally I don't know how accessible those journal articles would be to an AI, so maybe it has poor access to quality data.

I suggest that the problem is not that AI has access to bad data, it is that AI cannot tell 'bad' data from 'good' data. Computers in general are very good at gathering information from any database they can access, but not so good at evaluating that data for veracity and relevance. This is the same problem military intelligence has struggled with for decades: masses of data coming in, but not enough people trained to evaluate the data for what it really means and how it can be used.

Add to that the fact that 'creative' or 'good' writing is massively hard to define - just look at the variety of writing styles that are good only in the context of what they are trying to convey, and added to the data problem 'teaching' any AI system to write well becomes very, very difficult.

 

[itix]

Not only does this not look like a Civ VII leader in any way—it's just a general portrait (facially, the unfinished Gilbert Stuart portrait)—and it features the notorious "piss filter" that has been plaguing AI images lately due to autocannibalisation.

This is an issue with AI created content. It lacks personality.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Andrew, could you speak to the extent that Firaxis has been utilizing AI in production?

Narrative (including history) does not use AI. I do not know about other departments, but would be surprised. Each time a new LLM comes out, I ask it to summarize my work, as a test. It has never been error-free.

(In addition to the issues of quality and accuracy, there’s also the question of copyright. If LLMs were reading and understanding texts that would be one thing, instead they’re reproducing parts of or forms of texts).

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Case in point. I asked ChatGPT "generate an image of george washinton in the style of a civilization 7 leader". This is what it did. Not bad.

To me this looks just like a portrait of George Washington, not George Washington as a Civ VII leader.
Makes me feel better about AI not being used instead of hiring actual artists.

 

[Solver]

Yeah, I can't speak for the development process at Firaxis, but I can say most actors in the industry are very careful about using AI art or text.

Use of AI-generated material is currently a PR liability, as it's generally viewed negatively (unless you're super small like a one person studio, in which case it's more forgiving). And it has to be disclosed by store policy too, Steam requires you to describe the use of AI in your game, which they review, and it also has to be declared on the store page (and Civ7 has no such declaration so we can conclude there's no AI content in Civ7).

More importantly, for a big studio especially, the legal status of AI content is unclear. It's not clear to what extent AI content is protected by copyright. It's not clear how to make sure the content doesn't itself infringe upon other copyrights, and that's something studios are very careful about (Civ games undergo a lot more legal review than one might expect as an outsider).

The field is clearly moving very quickly, so this post could become outdated in the near future, but as of now in 2025, AI use is certainly deemed a big risk by major studios, even if there were no concerns about the quality of the actual output.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

To me this looks just like a portrait of George Washington, not George Washington as a Civ VII leader.

I agree. But honestly, I think I would prefer portrait style leaders in civ. George Washington looks like a statesmen in that portrait rather than a 3D game character.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I found it interesting that people tend to notice fewer problems with AI text when it's a subject outside of their realm of expertise or knowledge. It makes perfect sense why that would be the case, but it also makes me worry a lot because, in addition to hype, cost or whatever else excites a CEO, it makes perfect sense they would also be excited about something they perceive to be better at output than it actually is.

On one hand - yes. On the other, at the moment every time people notice AI work in popular commercial products, be it images or text, a huge of s**tstorm goes around social media. It's really bad for the product image at the moment.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Hell, it was a bit of an embarrassment, back in Civ V, when someone discovered that a bunch of the art had internet images as its basis.

We had a Scavenger Hunt thread to track as many of them down as we could.

 

[Gedemon]

Use of AI-generated material is currently a PR liability, as it's generally viewed negatively (unless you're super small like a one person studio, in which case it's more forgiving).

Or mods, but I'm not even sure it wouldn't cause some backlash if not clearly mentioned.

I agree. But honestly, I think I would prefer portrait style leaders in civ. George Washington looks like a statesmen in that portrait rather than a 3D game character.

well, yes, but for a civ leader you have to prompt for 3D

Spoiler my test (flux kontext AI) :

edit to add animation:

Spoiler Wan video :

 

[Lord Lakely]

Or mods, but I'm not even sure it wouldn't cause some backlash if not clearly mentioned.



well, yes, but for a civ leader you have to prompt for 3D

Spoiler my test (flux kontext AI) :

View attachment 741733

edit to add animation:

Spoiler Wan video :

Not gonna lie. Opening those spoiler tags gave me night terrors.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Not gonna lie. Opening those spoiler tags gave me night terrors.

But it's what Solver and ombak are referencing. An executive can look at those and say "hey, that's essentially the same thing as those animated leaders in Civ 7. And I get it for free, rather than having to pay someone craft it. Let's go with the free thing."

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Not gonna lie. Opening those spoiler tags gave me night terrors.

G. Washington by Art Crumb on Serious Drugs . . .

 

[Civinator]

Not gonna lie. Opening those spoiler tags gave me night terrors.

Yes, but with some changes in the hairstyle he could look somewhat like Mickey Mouse.

Spoiler :

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

But it's what Solver and ombak are referencing. An executive can look at those and say "hey, that's essentially the same thing as those animated leaders in Civ 7. And I get it for free, rather than having to pay someone craft it. Let's go with the free thing."

My bias here is also coming from my role as a professor. To have a student using AI is like going to the gym and bringing a forklift to lift weights - the point is not that we want weights lifted, it's that the practice hones the body/mind. There's also the issue of not being able to produce anything really new in scholarship; it's going to give the most common, most bland answer, which is the opposite from what I want as a teacher.

But... the fear for any creative is that "uncreative but serviceable and free" becomes attractive. But Solver raises very good and salient points - there's a legal and PR minefield here that any piece of media that wants to stick around for a few years needs to be wary of.

Another bias - my own work has been caught in the AI churn (via libgen). If someone buys my books and reads them, I get a small (very small) amount of money. If an AI bot scrapes it off the web and a student uses those scrapings, I get nothing. Were I dependent upon royalties (I am not - my rent is paid only via my professorial salary and whatever speaking or contract gigs - e.g. Firaxis - come about), I would be severely disinclined to be creative. If enough creatives stop creating, AI has nothing to scrape but its own detritus, and then we enter into a world where there is no newness - it's the Nothing from The Neverending Story made real.

Re: the original point of this thread. I am still contracted by Firaxis until late next month, but many people I know and care about were caught up. Thank you to those who lent support.

 

[billmason]

Doesn't say much new, but some media reporting on the layoffs is coming out.

 

[Civinator]

Re: the original point of this thread. I am still contracted by Firaxis until late next month, but many people I know and care about were caught up. Thank you to those who lent support.

Yes, of course this is the focus in this thread. Good luck to you and all those people that were caught up.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

My bias here is also coming from my role as a professor. To have a student using AI is like going to the gym and bringing a forklift to lift weights - the point is not that we want weights lifted, it's that the practice hones the body/mind. There's also the issue of not being able to produce anything really new in scholarship; it's going to give the most common, most bland answer, which is the opposite from what I want as a teacher.

But... the fear for any creative is that "uncreative but serviceable and free" becomes attractive. But Solver raises very good and salient points - there's a legal and PR minefield here that any piece of media that wants to stick around for a few years needs to be wary of.

Another bias - my own work has been caught in the AI churn (via libgen). If someone buys my books and reads them, I get a small (very small) amount of money. If an AI bot scrapes it off the web and a student uses those scrapings, I get nothing. Were I dependent upon royalties (I am not - my rent is paid only via my professorial salary and whatever speaking or contract gigs - e.g. Firaxis - come about), I would be severely disinclined to be creative. If enough creatives stop creating, AI has nothing to scrape but its own detritus, and then we enter into a world where there is no newness - it's the Nothing from The Neverending Story made real.

Re: the original point of this thread. I am still contracted by Firaxis until late next month, but many people I know and care about were caught up. Thank you to those who lent support.

I strongly disagree with your views towards AI, particularly in how it could be deployed in History.

History has a huge amount of disparate data in multiple languages and typeforms creating barriers to entry and barriers to understanding in the primary sources. AI would potentially be a great tool for unlocking primary sources for the masses in a consumables manner.

It has also been fantastic a gaining new insights in fields like medicine where it's discovering new antibiotics. It can spot trends that humans struggle to spot, and that is quite useful for historical research. Its not creative in that it's not going to write you a unique story that is unlike anything that's come before it, but history is about analysing and explaining what has come before, not making up something new, so in my opinion it has plenty of potential in that field.

Moderator Action: Please get back to topic. This is way off for this thread. leif
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Gori the Grey]

This might have begun to go a little bit off topic.

Speaking of which. There's a whole AI thread in the Off Topic subforum of the site, where a lot of this talk would be dead-on.

I'm active in OT, and a lot of you would make for cool posters in that section of CFC. It could use some new blood. The regulars there all know one another's positions inside and out.

Anyway, just an invitation.

 

[King of Prussia]

Art can be tricky to tell at times. We were constantly getting people complaining about us using AI art when we didnt. We took cover art someone made for our small indy game and ran it through AI. People thought the AI version was made by a human and the human version was AI. We were essentially incentivized to replace the human art with AI so people would stop complaining about us using an AI. We ended up replacing it completely with something else. While it is better, it was also a waste of a lot of time and money.



Anyways hopefully all those laid off can find new work quickly else where.

 

[Dale]

My thoughts to fellow game devs who have been let go over at Firaxis. I hope this is just a small bump on the road in your game dev journey.