You may still be thinking about the recent trailer for Snail Games’ Ark: Aquatica expansion, but not because it was so impressive it left a long lasting impression of wonder and awe. Rather, you probably still think about it because it was so with its heavy handed use of AI slop.
“This is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourselves,” reads one comment on the trailer’s YouTube page.
But, who was to blame for the trailer, which at the time of writing has amassed over 480k views, but only 1.7k upvotes on YouTube?
“That [trailer] was done by our marketing department,” lead game designer Matt Kohl told Aftermath. “They took our assets and then ran them through an AI to animate them. That was marketing.”
Kohl reiterated that the development team “did not do that” adding “there has been no AI use in development of Aquatica”. The designer said he didn’t “have any knowledge” as to why the marketing team decided to use AI for Ark: Aquatica’s trailer, which was revealed at GDC.