While the recently-released The Alters has been quite a successful title, especially when it comes to its critical reception, the game has now been the subject of quite a bit of criticism because of some discoveries in its files. Players have noticed that The Alters has seemingly made use of LLM-based AI for a host of different things, from the generation of some portrait icons, to even some localisation.
One player has even noticed that there is quite a bit of background text that essentially includes prompts one would typically feed to an LLM (large language model) to get some kinds of results. Another player noticed that some of the Portuguese localisation of the game has seemingly also been done using an LLM.
“There’s more damning evidence in-game, even, but it’s all background stuff that you have to go out of your way for,” posted one player. “There’s text crawls where you can still see the AI prompt responses before it produces a bunch of science jargon.”
What makes this especially noteworthy is the fact that developer 11 bit studios has made zero mention of using LLMs. Steam, especially, requires developers to inform potential buyers whether or not a game made use of AI tools in some form or another during development, and the Steam page for The Alters makes no mention of this.
“Steam requires developers to disclose AI use for a reason,” noted one player. “We have the right to know what we’re buying. If you’re going to use AI to create content, be honest about it instead of trying to hide it.”
Loc’d and Loaded’s game localisation specialist Lucile Danilov has provided her own thoughts about The Alters and its seeming use of LLMs for localisation. In a post on LinkedIn, Danilov wrote about how, while it’s a great game, the fact that AI prompts were left in the game is a “disgrace”.
“Seriously, leaving parts of an AI prompt in the lockit?! Talk about spitting in the face of your international audience,” wrote Danilov. “According to the OP, some parts of the [Brazilian Portuguese] translation are also riddled with errors and inaccuracies, which is appalling considering how the whole game revolves around an intricate narrative.”
Video game translator Handong Ryu responded to Danilov’s post by revealing that the Korean version of The Alters has also suffered from a similar fate.
“Unfortunately, the same issue exists in the Korean version as well, which makes it more likely that the second scenario you mentioned is closer to the truth,” wrote Ryu. “While no AI prompt has been exposed, I can confirm that the same section of the Korean localization shows clear signs of having been run through an LLM without proper editing.”
“There has been significant backlash from the Korean gaming community, and it has been really disheartening to witness, especially since the criticism stems from a part of the game I had no control over.”
The Alters was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S earlier this month. For more details, check out our review.
there's more damning evidence in-game, even, but it's all background stuff that you have to go out of your way forthere's text crawls where you can still see the AI prompt responses before it produces a bunch of science jargonwild that they've dodged disclosures all things considered