Chappell Roan Flies the Flag for Anti-AI Sentiment | 11/02/26
Plus our regular update on in-production projects for premium subscribers.
Take-Two insists GTA6 will be free of generative AI.
Chappell Roan’s Fortnite collab celebrates human artistry.
Roblox plagiarises Expedition 33 for its AI world model.
And China’s games industry is all-in on AI investment.
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Hello one and all, and welcome to AI and Games. We’ve got a lot going on behind-the-scenes right now, so we figured we’d dedicate this issue to all our premium subs to let them in on what’s in the pipeline. From our 2026 conference to our case studies, 2025 conference recordings, Goal State, and of course this here newsletter.
But before all of that let’s quickly round up the news from the past week, including more generative AI plagiarism, and both GTA6 and Fortnite advocating for human-crafted games!
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Last Week’s Headlines
A quick round-up of interesting stories that crossed my path in the past week or so.
Roblox Showcases Their Own ‘World Model’, Plagiarising AAA Games In Process
Roblox have been diving head-first into the world of generative AI research for some time now: investing in tools they can support creators ranging from texture generators to 3D asset construction. But last week they showcased some of their work in World Models - just like Microsoft’s Muse and Google’s Genie 3 that we’ve reported on already - via a thread on Twitter/X.
However unlike Genie 3, where Google at least had the smarts to try and showcase the tech without using any copyright infringing works (even if users were able to weed it out quite easily), they thought it was a good idea to demo the behaviour of the system using output that clearly infringes upon both Claire Obscure: Expedition 33 and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. While the latter is a little more vague, the opening of the video (including the thumbnail above) clearly shows the character Maelle wandering through an area inspired by the ‘Flying Waters’ locale in the opening 2-3 hours of the game.
As they stated later in same thread, they’re training NPCs by learning from 13 billion hours of player interaction data they accumulate every month on the platform. Thought they don’t seem all that enthusiastic about mentioning where the world model data comes from…
Take-Two Insists GTA 6 is Gen AI Free
In a recent earnings call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick insisted that the eagerly anticipated (and repeatedly delayed) Grand Theft Auto 6 will have zero evidence of generative AI in the final product. To quote (lifted from reporting by NME):
“With regards to GTA 6, generative AI has zero part in what Rockstar Games is building. Their worlds are handcrafted. That’s what differentiates them.
They’re built from the ground up, building by building, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood. They’re not procedurally generated, they shouldn’t be. That’s what makes great entertainment.”
Now the thing that sticks out for me here is he conflates procedural generation with generative AI, which are very two different things. It’s not the first time I’ve seen Zelnick present his strong anti genAI stance while also showing he doesn’t really understand AI in game development. It’s frustrating. That said, the comment does speak to what Rockstar has advocated for throughout their history, of crafting bespoke experiences that no other studio has the capacity - read: financial runway - to attempt.
That said, he did state in the same interview that Take-Two are running “hundreds of pilots and implementations” for generative AI adoption, which I have heard some rumblings of from my contacts. I suspect this will align with my expectations of a silent adoption of generative AI in processes across the sector while avoiding putting it in product. While GTA6 is arguably too big to fail, it’s not worth taking the risk of having generative AI sully the product if they can avoid it.
China’s Games Industry “Quietly Bankrolling Generative AI”
An article that cropped up over on the South China Morning Post (paywalled) that caught my eye was about the level of adoption and investment in generative AI that is coming from the Chinese games industry.
It’s not just that companies such as Tencent and miHoYo have utilised and implemented generative AI models in there games, such as the Deep Seek LLM being introduced into Game for Peace (the Chinese version of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds [PUBG]) or AI voices in Tears of Themis (a popular romance detective series). But they’re also investing in start-ups to support them in their broader adoption of AI-enabled development.
Publicly trading start-ups such as Z.ai (an LLM company formerly known in the west as Ziphu AI) and MiniMax (arguably China’s equivalent of ElevenLabs) have seen significant investment from Tencent, miHoYo and 37wan. With these companies seeking to showcase the potential of these innovations in their products - and having the inside track on new developments.
We’re seeing a significant increase in enthusiasm and investment in generative AI from Asian markets in the past year. With countries such as South Korea and Japan also keen to show their efforts in exploring and investing in the technology. This is, in many respects, an attempt to have ‘homegrown’ AI rather than be reliant on the bulk of western AI models given they originate from the United States.
Chappell Roan’s Fortnite Collab is Celebrated for Hand-Crafted Art
Last week Fortnite’s new collab with the pop star Chappell Roan came to the platform, and was publicised courtesy of the trailer above. It’s a rather fantastic piece of animation as it blends between multiple styles and approaches. I mean I was impressed by it as someone who wouldn’t know a the artists work if it bit me in the ass - no disrespect to Roan, but I’m a metal guy, it’s just not my thing. As a promotional piece for a video game it’s very well done, and no doubt there’s a ton of easter eggs in this collab for fans to get excited about.
As NME reported, the promo has gone down very well with fans on social media, who are excited by having such large-scale commercial art showcasing human-crafted techniques rather than with generative AI.
It speaks to how audiences are so fed up of AI slop infecting every part of their commercial consumption, that going the other route and investing the time and energy into it will pay dividends - with NME mentioning that some fans of Roan are now downloading Fortnite to try it out as a result. Proof that, in some corners at least, divesting from generative AI in commercial product could pay dividends.
Of course it’s worth saying this comes just two months after some small-scale drama over whether Epic Games used generative AI assets in the launch of Fortnite Chapter 7.
Behind-the-Scenes Updates
Okay here we go. There’s a lot of stuff happening for us right now in the background, be it the 2026 conference, new case studies, Goal State, newsletter issues and more. So let’s dig into where we are with all of these and what to expect as a regular reader and fan of our work. It’s important to me that our audience can get a bit of an insight into what we’re doing, plus how we’re investing the funds we raise from our premium subscriptions. Okay, let’s do it!
General Update
Let’s start with an update on all things AI and Games and where we’re at. We started the year with a very long list of things to do, but also a sobering assessment of our finances. We’re in a position right now where we have enough cash to keep our wee enterprise running more or less until the end of the year. But in the meantime we need to bring in some more work in our consultancy and training business, plus work on fleshing out our revenue streams in others - this is why subscribing right here is a huge boost for us, it really does add up.
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