Tomb Raider Legacy of Atlantis uses gen-AI, Amazon Games defends the tech

In a deflating bit of news, it appears that Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is the latest game to embrace generative AI in its development process. Crystal Dynamics and Amazon Games added the following disclosure to the game’s Steam page: “AI-assisted tools were used during development to support some early exploration and temporary development content. Any AI-assisted assets were either replaced or refined by humans in order to maintain the creative and artistic vision of the development team.”

While that statement suggests Crystal Dynamics aims to remove or touch up AI-generated art from its remake of the 1996 original Tomb Raider, its use in the artistic process will likely prove controversial. The early response to the news has been mixed to negative on the Tomb Raider subreddit, ranging from vague hopes that the generative-AI craze will simply go away to grim resignation that this is the future of game development.

GM of Amazon Games Jeff Gattis told Polygon why the company has been embracing generative AI.

“We’ve been pretty bullish on GenAI and I know that’s a very controversial topic, but not so much GenAI in terms of how we make games, but games that can be made on large language models that could not have been made three to five years ago,” Gattis said. “We think there’s opportunities to make interesting new types of games made by humans, but games that couldn’t have been made three to five years ago.”