Clair Obscur won multiple awards but used generative AI art as placeholders during production.
The Indie Game Awards revoked Clair Obscur’s Debut and Game of the Year after the AI disclosure.
IGAs reassigned the awards (Blue Prince, Sorry We’re Closed) and reignited debate on gen-AI use.
Sauce: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-creative-revolution-how-technology-is-making-art-accessible-to-everyone.html
Not exactly a massive AI slop problem, right?
One of the rules was no AI during development, they voluntarily claimed they didn’t use it.
They used it. Sure, in a minor way, but they used it and got caught.
The rules are the rules. Some chess events ban caffeine, we might laugh and say drinking a cup of coffee is not a big deal - but they’d be disqualified.
This has the same validity as an argument as “I was just following orders” or “I am just doing my job” or “I told you I would hit you in five seconds, so you did know” same reasoning behind teachers that throw students out for being 5 minutes late
We are animals…
But this is like banning someone from a chess event because they experimented with caffeine 3 years ago and accidentally left a single Nespresso pod in their bag. That they also immediately threw in the trash when they noticed
Or like they submitted a game to an award that said no AI in development, said they didn’t use AI in development, when in reality they did.
Because they thought they didn’t and found out 3 year old in-house AI test assets ended up in the release version. And promptly replaced them with the actual art done by their own actual artists, the ones who did the AI experiment.
That’s fine, but they did use AI in development, so whether or not they removed the assets they should not be included in this award category.
You do acknowledge that “using AI during development” is a massive thing to ban games for.
How can they check for that in the future?
it’s irrelevant whether you agree with the rule or not… the award is for games that didn’t use AI during development. the game should not have originally been in contention for the award
i tend to agree this is the right way to use AI assets, but this isn’t the award for them… it doesn’t matter if it was accidental, if it was removed before release, or anything else
Yes it’s their rule. It’s a stupid rule.
But how do they intend to police said rule in the future? Since it clearly isn’t just for released art assets but THE WHOLE PROCESS.
If it’s just self reported what’s the point?
I don’t know. It’s not really up to me to figure that out, either. Companies should self-report on their AI usage.
Right. The far bigger problem is how trash of an engine Unreal5 is, and all the forced processing making things look and run like shit. But that’s not just a Clair Obsur problem.