Assassin's Creed Spiritual Successor Free Demo Criticised For Accidental 'AI Slop' Inclusion

Assassin’s Creed spiritual successor 1666: Amsterdam has apologised for including AI-generated assets in the game’s free demo.

Announced during Summer Game Fest, 1666: Amsterdam is the second game from Panache Digital Games, a studio headed by former Assassin’s Creed developer Patrice Désilets.

From the looks of it, 1666: Amsterdam is adapting some of the same ideas and concepts from Assassin’s Creed, while also putting a unique spin on the historical action-adventure format.

A free demo was launched alongside its announcement during last week’s Summer Game Fest, offering players a chance to check out the game’s prologue.

Reception to the demo has been mixed at best, with players pointing out design flaws present in the 30-minute slice. What’s more, some AI-generated assets were also discovered in the game and on the cover art (as detailed by this thread).

“It plays like the devs forgot like 20 years of gaming history. Demo was bad then, but now that Generative AI is officially confirmed by the devs, it's even worse,” reads one of the player reviews for the demo on Steam.

The review also calls out that Panache Digital doesn’t declare its use of AI-generated content on the Steam store page, a practice that the reviewer finds “disgusting”.

Another review simply refers 'AI slop', a common sentiment regarding AI-generated content.

Panache Digital Games

1666: Amsterdam Developer Responds To AI Backlash

As backlash towards the game picked up, the developer shared a response online apologising for the AI-generated content and promised to remove it in a future update.

“A number of people have raised questions or concerns to us about whether assets in our marketing and game use generative AI,” the post from Panache Digital Games reads on X (formerly Twitter).

“We have a dedicated team of over a dozen talented and experienced artists. With them, we looked into the assets in question and found that there were indeed some early versions of assets that made their way into the prologue. This includes some in-game portraits and external marketing assets.

“We are actively reviewing the assets in question. Human-made versions will be released in an update dropping soon. We own up to this oversight and apologise for any upset caused. Please be assured that the Early Access and full game will not include any assets generated by AI.”

Still, with the massive pushback against AI-generated assets within the gaming community, it painted a sour picture of the game that was otherwise looking pretty interesting for a lot of people.

1666: Amsterdam is just one of several games that made an appearance during Summer Game Fest, which featured AI-generated content. It was also revealed that Crazy Taxi: World Tour used AI tools during development, and that Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis featured an AI-generated content disclosure on Steam.

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