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."

It isn’t entirely clear what Gattis means by “games […] made on large language models.” He may be referring to something like Nvidia’s generative AI-powered NPCs or perhaps some new form of procedural generation. In more concrete terms, Amazon has already released an AI-powered party game on Luna called Courtroom Chaos - Starring Snoop Dogg. The store page description describes how players take turns improvising fictionalized testimony to defend their case, and “it’s all moderated by the dynamic, AI-powered Judge Snoop Dogg.” The game’s store page features abundant AI-generated imagery that looks like a surreal Judge Judy episode, and frankly, it’s all pretty bleak.

To say that AI has been poorly received by many gamers is an understatement. Hideo Kojima fans hung their heads in shame as the auteur was featured in an AI-generated Prada video last week; Nvidia got roasted for its new DLSS toggle tech that yassified Grace from Resident Evil: Requiem; and Party Animals’ AI art contest sparked a wave of negative reviews on Steam. Beyond labor concerns, art theft worries, and environmental issues, the most straightforward reason AI art has been unpopular is that many players find it hideous. We’ll find out for sure whether Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis’ use of AI is particularly blatant when itcomes out in February 2027.

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We also learned that the game is coming to Nintendo Switch 2