Activision Made Billions Last Year and Still Used AI Art in Black Ops 7

I wasn’t going to write about Black Ops 7. The sales being down, the bad reviews, the campaign you cant pause – other people already covered all that and I didn’t have much to add. But then I saw the calling cards and now I cant shut up about it.

They used AI art. In Call of Duty. Studio Ghibli style AI art specifically, the same filter that was all over twitter back in march when everyone was turning their selfies into anime characters. That filter. In a military shooter. That costs $70.

and at first I thought maybe people were overreacting. Then I saw the screenshots. Theres one where a character has that weird AI mouth thing going on. Another one looks like it was generated in like 30 seconds. These are reward items. Things youre supposed to grind for. And they look like something I could make on my lunch break with a free midjourney trial.

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“They have AI ghibli calling cards for the campaign in Bo7 man this is so funny”

Activision Blizzard made like 8 billion dollars in revenue last year. Eight. Billion. They have offices full of artists. Talented people who went to school for this stuff and built careers around making game art. And someone in a meeting said you know what, lets just use the AI thing instead. For the calling cards at least. Nobody will notice.

People noticed.

The Steam page has a disclaimer now that says they use “generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets” which is corporate speak for yes we did it but please dont be too mad. And look I get that AI tools are everywhere now and companies are going to use them, thats just reality. But theres a difference between using AI to help with like, I dont know, procedural terrain generation or whatever, and using it to make the actual art that players see and collect and show off to their friends.

Its the laziness that gets me. Not even the AI part specifically but just the complete lack of effort. Like they didnt even try to hide it. The Ghibli style is SO recognizable at this point, anyone who spent five minutes on social media this year knows exactly what AI ghibli art looks like. You couldnt pick literally any other style? You had to go with the one that screams “I generated this in 10 seconds”?

A congressman got involved btw. Ro Khanna from California put out a statement about AI replacing artists and cited Black Ops 7 specifically. A united states congressman. Talking about Call of Duty calling cards. Because Activision couldnt be bothered to pay someone to draw pictures.

This is the same franchise that made over a billion dollars last year btw. Black Ops 6 sold insanely well despite being on game pass. They had the budget. They had the resources. They chose not to use them.

And now the game is flopping. 63% behind Battlefield in europe. 61% down from last year in the UK. User score of 1.7 on metacritic. I dont think the AI art caused all of that, theres other problems too obviously. But its emblematic of the whole thing isnt it? The cutting corners. The assuming people will buy it anyway because its Call of Duty. The complete contempt for the audience.

I played every black ops game from the first one through cold war. Spent hundreds of hours in zombies with my college roommates. Have genuinely fond memories of the franchise. And watching them fumble this badly is just kind of sad honestly. Not because I think Cod deserves to fail but because it didn’t have to be like this.

Hire artists. Pay them fairly. Let them make art. Its not complicated.

But what do I know. I’m just some guy with a blog and opinions. Activision has shareholders and quarterly reports and probably a dozen consultants telling them AI is the future. Maybe they’re right and in five years all game art will be generated and nobody will care.

I hope not though. I really hope not.