Key findings
- inZOI’s character editor features technologies like Live Link facial integration with Unreal and, more worryingly, generative AI.
- Krafton has been very open about its use of generative AI to reduce costs, raising ethical concerns about the industry’s job description and copyright infringement.
- inZOI doesn’t seem to implement that much generative AI from what we’ve seen so far, but it’s clear that Krafton makes heavy use of it in developing its games.
Krafton’s upcoming life sim inZOI has been touted as a Sims killer by many avid gamers. Considering that EA’s The Sims franchise has had a stranglehold on the genre for decades and can therefore price its products as exploitatively as it wants, people are craving something new and inZOI seems to be the most likely displacer.
I spent some time with inZOI’s character editor earlier this week — maybe too much time — and was pretty impressed with its capabilities. It doesn’t hurt that the graphics are beautiful, challenging the cartoonish style of The Sims with surprisingly realistic, completely model-like characters. But even in that editor alone, I found things that gave me pause, and as I dug deeper, I became even more uneasy.
InZOI there is already an AI generation
inZOI relies heavily on technology that hasn’t even come close to being implemented in The Sims. For example, you’ll be able to link the character editor to Unreal’s Live Link Face app on your phone to make your Zois perform certain facial expressions. There’s even full-body motion capture in the works.
However, this technological advancement also means that there is a lot of AI generation being used in the game. Playing around with the outfits in the character editor, it turns out that not only can you customize the color of almost any item of clothing, but you can also use a generative AI tool to create custom textures or convert photos into textures that you can overlay on said items.
Likewise, you can take pictures of objects and feed them into the internal generative AI tool to create 3D models and then place them in your Zoi’s environment. On the surface, this is pretty cool. I would love to take a picture of my favorite shirt and feed it into the game for my Zoi to wear, or hang the posters I have in my actual room in my Zoi’s house.
But of course, there are ethical issues with that. It’s unclear if the database used for these tools is based on stolen work or if it’s an internal database built entirely using Krafton’s work, but blog posts and videos from the company have shown them using tools like Midjourney and Diffusion to create art, at least in the development process. Either way, it still largely negates the need for the studio to employ 3D modelers, essentially making those jobs obsolete, and generative AI also has well-documented environmental costs that further cloud the ethics of these tools.
Krafton is open to the use of generative AI
Krafton is very open about its commitment to artificial intelligence, with an entire section of its website dedicated to its Deep Learning division, which is working on using generative AI to “increase gaming productivity” by generating graphics, animations, and voices, translating research into real-world tools, creating “virtual friends” to play and talk with, virtual influencers who can livestream games, and probably more that isn’t mentioned on the website.
Its motivations are also very openly stated – in the various blog posts and videos from the studio that I’ve watched, representatives repeatedly say that generative AI is used to develop games with fewer people involved and lower costs. This obviously means that the company is using generative AI tools rather than hiring people to do this work, which shows that this is a larger pattern within the company that likely runs deep into inZOI.
It’s worth noting that Krafton has a history of enthusiastically jumping on trendy, dubious new technologies – its upcoming metaverse game Overdare uses “advanced AI generative tools” and integrates blockchain technology and NFTs, and features a “create-to-earn” business model. Who’s to tell it that nobody cares about NFTs anymore?
At the very bottom of Krafton’s AI-centric webpage is a subsection titled “Ethical AI,” which states that the Krafton AI Ethics Committee exists to “facilitate ongoing discussions and debates on AI ethics issues” and includes “members from diverse teams such as legal, data, and privacy.” It also hosts regular roundtables to “establish ethical guidelines and codes of conduct and monitor compliance with them.” Krafton’s AI ethics page states that its principles include not violating fundamental human rights, respecting diversity, protecting personal information, and creating “trustworthy AI.”
As far as I can tell, there are only vague allusions to the ethical issues of “copyright,” and nowhere does Krafton say that AI is a tool that helps developers rather than completely freeing them from their jobs. This is probably because AI does the opposite and tries to reduce costs as much as possible.
This is the company that bought Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks after it was shut down by Xbox. The more I read about its commitment to generative AI, the more nervous I get about how much it might force those tools on the companies it owns. Allowing players to generate textures for clothing is a relatively small, almost harmless problem that actually benefits its audience… when it works. (I’ve seen reviews saying it doesn’t work nearly as well as it should.) But a single AI tool is a far cry from the amount of work Krafton does using generative AI, and we should all be careful what we tacitly condone when we make this particular game our sim-killer.
