The past two months with the Ark Raiders have been some of the most fun I've had with the game all year. It represents the most exciting and unpredictable multiplayer world I've dived into since 2018's Sea of Thieves, and it's my favorite game I've ever made. It's safe to say that I love Ark Raiders. But the more I learn about Embark Studio's use of generative AI, the more I find it difficult to fully endorse that sentiment.
The studio said the voice acting for Ark Raiders was initially performed by humans, but was later used to “train” the AI to speak in the actors' voices while adapting to any situation. With Embark, the team doesn't have to bring in voice actors every time new content is added to the game. The AI voice will learn to speak in the actor's voice, which the actor reportedly consented to at the time of hiring, and the tool will take it from there. This may not be surprising, since the team's previous game, The Finals, used generative AI in a similar way. In an interview, Embark assured players that the game's visual artwork is entirely human-created, but admitted that he used this text-to-speech training to bring voices to the game's shop NPCs, emotes, and other character sounds. Knowing this, I feel conflicted when trying to praise this game.
On the other hand, I can't deny that Ark Raiders has a hold over me. The heart desires what the heart desires. Embark's Extraction Shooter is rich in emergent, player-driven drama, and it touched my heart in a way that few games have before. At the same time, I have already written a review. It was a glorious thing for me that I don't regret, but I also feel it's my job to bring attention to this disappointing practice. Similar practices and schemes have surfaced in several high-profile instances in recent weeks. In some cases, Larian Studios bosses guaranteed it. The former CEO of Nexon said that AI is going to rewrite everything in the gaming industry. Ubisoft has announced that it uses AI tools to help create games in some cases. Even Hideo Kojima, who is often thought of as a unique voice in the industry, says he uses the term from time to time. It is presented as not only helpful, but inevitable.
is that so? Most of the people vouching for this technology seem to be executives and upper echelons of studios, who are clearly emotionally and professionally invested in this technology because of the potential to reduce the time and money required for their projects. But a lot of what generative AI does is also, frankly, shitty.
We already know that using generative AI as a search engine poses major problems. I'm not looking up facts on the internet. It's a sentence structure guessing machine, where each word in a sentence or paragraph is based on what it expects to be the correct word or sentence sequence, based on tons of data ripped from any source provided by the author. This allows some AI bots, such as X's Grok, to routinely express untrue and sometimes hateful rhetoric. This issue was raised based on the CEO's view of tired edgelordism.
Generative AI as a writing tool is a legendary plagiarist, remixing the vast amounts of old books, articles, and other human-created works it's fed, regurgitating them as pure, irredeemable crap, often sold cheaply on Amazon, where it preys on readers and gift givers who don't have the internet literacy to realize the mess they're buying.
On the other hand, some say AI photos and videos will become more realistic, undermining arguments against using the technology. Others say the AI-generated images are simply a starting point, a brainstorming speed run where human artists can take the kernel of an AI-generated idea and build from there. Executives such as Epic's Tim Sweeney have said that generative AI will become so prevalent that efforts like Steam's labeling system, which is used to disclose the use of generative AI in games, will soon become irrelevant. There's even debate about how problematic it is for the environment, which further obscures the ethical issues surrounding this technology. If so, when is it reasonable to use it?But we find that none of these caveats and arguments ultimately address the most important consideration that will forever be tied to generative AI, no matter how trustworthy, clean, and unbiased it may someday be: Our humanity matters.
Art is one of the greatest gifts we as humans can give back to the world. The depth of our thinking and creation is unique to this world, perhaps this universe. I can't find any valid arguments or excuses for generative AI use cases that overcome this truth. That's why using Ark Raiders is such a shame. One of the best games of the year has this fat asterisk next to it. These voice actors deserve more recognition, and abandoning their likeness will only hurt themselves and their colleagues now and in the future. The truth seems to be that this technology tends to get better the more you train it. As such, using it is ethically questionable and can be really disappointing in some cases, as in the case of Ark Raiders. Perhaps Ark Raiders' AI narration will improve over time. But that doesn't replace the fact that voice acting is a talent, an art form in itself, and deserves to be performed by people who bring genuine emotion to the roles, not bots who fake it every step of the way.
What proponents of using AI overlook is that the creation itself is an important part of the project. This is what infuses life and perspective. Generative AI cannot be art because it is not created with a perspective. Made with prompts. Of all the arguments against the use of generative AI, I think this is the most difficult to convey to people who are casually interested in this technology. Those who ask ChatGPT to come up with memes, write cover letters, or answer health-related questions may not be thinking about the cumulative human costs of using this technology. It is difficult to quantify why our humanity matters and how the use of generative AI negatively impacts it. It's a kind of abstract argument that has to appeal to them first and foremost.
But there are also practical arguments. Because the more we use generative AI, the more we train it to replace us as workers, creators, and people with a sense of belonging. As technology industry executives once again battle with boat racers over where to draw the regulatory line, we are accelerating toward a world where a very exclusive few accumulate all the wealth, while working people rotate from industry to industry. Feeding this beast becomes the architect of its dystopia, as there are economic calculations along the way. This problem extends beyond Ark Raider and, of course, beyond the game. This is a problem that gets worse for everyone. It's hard for me to lose sight of that truth.
Arc Raiders proves that using generative AI doesn't necessarily ruin the game, but when it does, it doesn't actually improve the game. While some might say it's improved from a workflow standpoint, the finished artwork for Ark Raiders doesn't seem to be improved thanks to the generative AI. So is it really worth the cost? As more developers speak out about the obstacles created by generative AI, studios seem to be embracing it out of fear of being left behind, unaware that it sometimes causes other developments to slow down.
All of these will be my top professional priorities in the near future. I've done a lot of interviews here at GameSpot, and I'll be doing a lot more in the future. I ask the developers I spoke with how they plan to use this technology. I feel we have reached a tipping point, a fork in the road. We can normalize this, accept it as inevitable, and let it become more pervasive in games, television, books, and other art forms we value, or we can ask important questions. Why are we using this technology? What problems does it solve? What problems does it cause? Who will benefit and who will be left behind? The Ark Raiders were a lightning rod for this topic at the end of 2025. That made my personal Game of the Year selection awkward and unpleasant, but it won't be the last of its kind. If executives are thoughtlessly trading the spirit of creativity for a cut of profits, I think it's very important to demand that they explain why.
