I remember about 2 years ago, the Steam Next Fest was basically of more importance than Christmas for me. Not only did it used to remind me of a time when demo disks were common for PC and Console games back in the day, it also finally made developers take proper demos seriously. What advertising is more honest than to actually let the players experience a snippet of your game. It was awesome?
Fast forward to 2026. The last Steam Next Fest was absolutely overrun with AI slop. I’m not talking some “placeholder” assets. I’m talking AI generated art, AI generated description and some of them looked like they where the first attempt of a local model to one-shot what the “dev” had in mind. The current Next Fest is a little bit tamer. But the last one was literally 90% slop.
In my opinion Steam really needs to have a big fat disclaimer required if any AI assets are present in the current game or promotional material, something akin to the warning that abandoned Early Access games receive.
No, it’s not irrelevant. If one is willing to use AI for something so mind-numbingly mundane as replacing a stock image, it tells me they’re willing to use it for anything, marking everything else from that point as suspect.
Ah, “the fruit of the poisonous tree” anti-AI sentiment. I think it’s a ridiculous stance, but I understand.
Don’t ever let anyone hear you speaking to your phone or check a weather forecast! That’s AI and by using it, you’re just contaminating the world.
Also, if you catch COVID and end up in the hospital, make sure to refuse all the treatments that are drugs discovered by AI. That’s literally generative AI, BTW. Same exact tech as LLMs. Pharmaceutical companies are building data centers left and right to find more drugs like those COVID treatments. Don’t let them put one near you!
The only way they might have a point is that the marketing department and the developers are probably not the same people. Unless this is a 1-5 person operation.