Call of Duty Dev Treyarch Could Start Using AI in Art Development

April 28, 2024

Highlights

Treyarch may be shifting towards using AI-generated art in their games, causing some backlash within the gaming community.
The job posting for a 2D Artist/Animator at Treyarch mentions the use of generative AI tools to create and polish artwork.
There is a growing trend in the video game industry towards utilizing AI-generated art, despite concerns about replacing human artists.

Treyarch, one of the developers behind the Call of Duty games, is drawing some criticism online after a job posting on its careers page possibly hinted at the studio moving towards using AI-generated art in its games. While the job posting does not specifically state that the artist is being sought out for work in the Call of Duty franchise, Treyarch has been exclusively developing games from that franchise for more than 15 years.

The developer released its first game, Olympic Hockey ’98, for the N64, and it had its first shot at Call of Duty in 2005 with Call of Duty 2: Big Red One. Following the release of Call of Duty: World at War in late 2008, Treyarch has focused exclusively on Call of Duty, having worked on ten games in the franchise between 2010 and 2023, including every title in the Call of Duty: Black Ops series.

According to some recent leaks, Call of Duty 2024 could be shipping with one of the most hated multiplayer perks in CoD history.

As directly stated in the job posting, which was uncovered on Twitter by CharlieIntel, “Treyarch is looking for a talented 2D Artist/Animator to join our in-house team to deliver a large variety of dynamic content types for our games. A successful candidate will be an Artist who is skilled in digital illustration, motion design, and using generative AI tools.” Under a heading titled “What you’ll do…,” the job posting from the Call of Duty developer goes on to say that the person in the job will “polish” art that is created by both human artists and generative AI tools. It also states that the artist should be experienced in Stable Diffusion, Vizcom, Dall-E, or another similar AI-generated art program, as well as having skill and talent for creating digital art by regular human means.

The Fight Over AI Art Continues

The battle against AI art in the entertainment industry has been a long-drawn-out one, and it may be even more prevalent in video games than in other forms of media. In March, a report from Unity revealed many games studios use AI — 62 percent, to be more precise — although a lot of that AI-generated art doesn’t make it to the final product in its initial form, with many responding studios reporting that they use the computer-generated artwork for things like prototypes and concepts rather than a finished product.

With that in mind, the implied future use of AI-generated art contained in this job listing shouldn’t be surprising, but it’s still upsetting to members of the gaming community who don’t want creative and skilled human artists to be replaced by computer programs. That said, with the increased time it takes development teams to complete work on games as technology advances, it seems inevitable that the slide into more games using AI-generated art is likely to continue.