GTA 6 Online may have competition as Saints Row 'AI slop' drops today

An ambitious new multiplayer overhaul for Saints Row 2 has arrived, bringing 12-player open-world chaos to the beloved 2008 classic, alongside an unexpected connection to artificial intelligence that may put some players off.

With Grand Theft Auto VI launching on 19 November, Rockstar Games is preparing for its next era of open-world crime, with a successor to GTA Online reportedly following in 2027. However, Saints Row fans have found another way to keep the competition alive, despite the franchise's uncertain future following its disappointing 2022 reboot.

Saints Row 2's massive Project Pablo mod introduces 12-player free-roam

Project Pablo is aiming to bring Saints Row 2 into the modern multiplayer era (YouTube/Saintsgodzilla Extras)

Released on 26 October, Saints Row: Project Pablo is a fan-made multiplayer expansion developed by modder Pablo, offering a considerable overhaul of the original game's online experience.

Announcing the project on X (formerly Twitter), fellow community member mrsaintsgodzilla21 wrote: "Saints Row 2 will never be the same."

The headline addition is 12-player free-roam across Stilwater, expanding the game's original two-player cooperative experience into one that shares plenty of DNA with GTA Online.

Beyond exploring the city together, players can also participate in races, turf wars, and a Drug Truck Heist, Saints Row fans can even access a new menu for weapons, vehicles, and teleportation. Essentially, this is very Grand Theft Auto-coded.

As explained further on its Saints Row Mods thread, though, there are also 21 multiplayer maps, 36 game modes, more than 190 weapons and 11 vehicles inspired by franchises including Halo, Call of Duty and Team Fortress 2. These additions include recreations of iconic maps such as Nuketown, Blood Gulch and Shipment, alongside modes like Gun Game, Prop Hunt, Infection, and Zombies.

Although it lacks the scale of Rockstar's online offering, Project Pablo is essentially being pitched as a nostalgic alternative for players wanting to cause havoc with friends — which on paper, would be a welcome change compared to everything that went wrong with the 2022 Saints Row reboot.

Project Pablo's revealed AI connection

Fans are starting to uncover the mod's use of AI, and are not happy (Saints Row Mods/Pablo)

That said, not everyone seemed happy after digging into Project Pablo’s development credits, which explicitly acknowledge Claude, the generative AI assistant developed by Anthropic, as a part of the Saints Row 2 mod’s production process.

The X post sharing the mod was only released this morning, but there are already responses calling it out, including one user screenshotting the credits with the caption: “they had me in the first part.”

Meanwhile, another simply called it ‘AI slop’, as has been the growing term for games which largely utilise artificial intelligence in content and game development. That said, it hasn’t been clarified yet how much Claude contributed and if the project is AI-generated overall.

Meanwhile, reactions on the rest of the thread and the project's YouTube trailer have been overwhelmingly positive.

One fan wrote: "Oh this is game changing. A new age of Saints is upon us."

Another added: "This is such a fun mod to play with people, [a] breath of fresh air in the community".

On the other hand, it’s likely not all of those users are aware of the mod’s credit to Claude just yet, as you actually have to click on the ‘Spoiler: Credits’ box on the Saints Row Mods thread to reveal it.

Project Pablo is available for PC players, with downloads currently distributed through the mod's dedicated Discord server.