Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has AI-generated visuals, Activision Blizzard confirms

Call of Duty fans have speculated for months that AI was used to create visuals in the game after flagging irregularities.

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile will no longer be playable on many mid-range phones. (Image credit: Activision)

Activision Blizzard, the company behind the multi-million dollar Call of Duty franchise, has disclosed that it used AI-generated visuals for the 21st instalment of the video game series titled Black Ops 6.

“Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in-game assets,” Activision said in the disclosure section of the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s game page on Steam, an online gaming platform.

This disclosure follows Steam’s newly introduced AI transparency policies for publishers. However, Call of Duty fans have speculated for several months that AI was used to create visuals in the game after flagging irregularities in gaming elements such as a zombie Santa with extra fingers.

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AI tools are known to struggle with accurately generating human appendages. Activision was acquired by Microsoft in 2023 for $69 billion. In 2024, the tech giant cut nearly 2,000 jobs from its gaming division as part of its efforts to focus more resources towards AI, according to a report by CNET.

Earlier this year, Steam’s parent company Valve introduced policies that require developers to disclose how AI was used to develop and execute the game.

“It’s taken us some time to figure this out, and we’re sorry that has made it harder for some developers to make decisions around their games,” Valve said on its website.

“But we don’t feel like we serve our players or developer partners by rushing into decisions that have this much complexity. We’ll continue to learn from the games being submitted to Steam, and the legal progress around AI, and will revisit this decision when necessary,” it said.

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The role of generative AI in design and innovation is yet to be fully determined even as gaming developers and publishers grapple with concerns over quality and transparency as well as job displacement. However, tech giants have continued to push for AI in video game development in order to address rising costs of releasing new games amid consumer fatigue.

Last week, Microsoft announced it has developed an AI model called Muse that is capable of generating visuals and actions specifically for video games.

“We are already using Muse to develop a real-time playable AI model trained on other first-party games, and we see potential for this work to one day benefit both players and game creators,” Fatima Kardar, corporate vice president for gaming AI, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Elon Musk has also expressed intentions to establish a new AI gaming studio under xAI. “We’re launching an AI gaming studio at xAI. If you’re interested in joining us in building AI games, please join xAI,” Musk said during the launch of the startup’s Grok 3 model which is capable of generating 2D titles such as Tetris using Python.