The Alters Is Under Criticism for Its Use of Artificial Intelligence
11 Bit Studios’ new game The Alters has come to the fore this time not with its gameplay or story, but with the traces of artificial intelligence detected in its subtitles and background texts. While developers are required to clearly state such content according to Steam policies, the fact that no information about the use of artificial intelligence was found on the game’s page caused a backlash from players.
The Use of Artificial Intelligence in The Alters Created Controversy
Some of the texts noticed by players appear to directly contain content created with large language models (LLM). In particular, a direct AI output such as “Sure, here’s a revised version focusing purely on scientific and astronomical data” was detected on a scientific background screen. In addition, the Brazilian Portuguese subtitles contained corrupted sentences that appeared to have been translated by AI. Steam users described this situation as “unacceptable” for it to occur without an explanation.
Valve has made it mandatory to disclose AI-powered content as of the beginning of 2024. However, The Alters’ page does not contain any information on this subject. A user who criticized the issue expressed his reaction by saying, “Steam is making this transparency mandatory. We have the right to know what we are getting.” On the other hand, some players argue that it is meaningless to make such a big deal just for unreadable background text.
Lucile Danilov, who works in the translation field, considered the presentation of the game in this way as disrespectful to international players. She stated that the errors detected especially in Brazilian Portuguese negatively affected the narrative. Handong Ryu, who undertook the Korean translation of the game, confirmed that similar problems were also in the Korean version and said that he thought these parts were most likely translated by AI at the last minute.
11 Bit Studios has not officially responded to these criticisms so far. Players who argue that the use of AI should be disclosed transparently emphasize that such situations damage trust in games. Although The Alters was praised for its narrative and atmosphere, it was also the target of criticism in the shadow of the artificial intelligence debate.
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