Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford defends AI policy after posting AI-generated image sparks backlash

Gearbox boss posts AI image "for fun," spends hours defending studio's no-AI policy

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Facepalm: If there's one person in the gaming industry who might be well served by staying away from social media, it's Randy Pitchford. The Gearbox boss just added to his history of ill-thought-out posts with one that showed an AI-generated image of an AI working at his company. It might have been a bit of fun on his part, but the post got so much hate that Pitchford had to continually emphasize Gearbox's no-AI policy. The situation started on May 3, when Pitchford's X post showed an AI-generated image. "I asked my primary AI tool to generate a selfie that indicates how they feel based on how I interact with it and this is what it generated (note: background words were not prompted and have zero relationship to anything real)," he wrote. In a time when most people are strongly against generative AI being used in games - or any medium, for that matter - it seems strange Pitchford thought his post would be a good idea. As you'd expect, nearly all of the 430 responses to the post were not as positive or jovial as Pitchford seemingly expected. One of the most liked replies noted that Pitchford's post did not help rumors that the latest Borderlands 4 patch notes had been AI-generated. Pitchford said that the company's policy was to never use AI for anything in any professional capacity "that the customer could see." Someone else pointed out that the BL4 notes are full of mistakes, misspellings, and erroneous descriptions of items, such as a shield that was described as a grenade. Pitchford said these were due to "human error." Pitchford used the same "no-AI policy" line verbatim when responding to several other people who argued his use of the technology suggested Gearbox would have no issues doing the same in its games. Pitchford also repeated the same excuse several times: that the post illustrated just how "dumb and silly" AI-generated content can be, and that anyone who didn't realize this was missing the point. He eventually posted a lengthy statement claiming he was "inspired by friends who were "goofing around with making [AI] try to make pictures of itself." "My friends I was with for lunch earlier produced some funny things with similar prompts for themselves and I wanted to see what bullshit it would generate as an idea of a self identity because the idea of an AI even having an identity is nonsense," Pitchford wrote. "The result was somehow more embarrassingly hilarious than I expected and I wanted to share that." Pitchford also posted a poll result that showed he considered his behavior on X to fall into the description of "I'm cool: don't comment." Make of that what you will. Pitchford has a history of showing off his poor PR skills. Last September, he addressed the Borderlands 4 performance issues by arguing it was "a premium game made for premium gamers," suggesting the fault lay with those lacking high-end hardware. He also told those complaining about a lack of optimization to "code your own engine and show us how it's done, please." Pitchford also got into trouble by claiming "real fans" would pay $80 for Borderlands 4 if it launched with that price tag. Thankfully for everyone (and him), it didn't.

Randy Pitchford says Gearbox has a firm no-AI policy after posting an AI-generated image of an AI working at Gearbox

Randy just wanted to have a little fun, but it didn't work out so well. Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford is making friends and influencing people on social media, which is to say that he's repeatedly insisting the studio does not use generative AI in a professional capacity (and occasionally calling people names) after a gen AI image he posted over the weekend drew a pretty negative reaction from followers. The whole thing started on May 3: "I asked my primary AI tool to generate a selfie that indicates how they feel based on how I interact with it and this is what it generated (note: background words were not prompted and have zero relationship to anything real)," he wrote on X. Boy, that's a ratio. In a reply to a follower who said a real photo of Pitchford in his office "would have been much better received," he wrote," The point was to make the AI make a picture of how it saw itself to put a lens on the absurdity of the idea of AI having an identity. In what universe does what you suggest have anything to do with the point?" But it was all downhill from there: Other followers expressed concern about the use of generative AI in Borderlands games, or disapproval in general; Pitchford insisted several times that the intent was merely to be "silly," and that Gearbox's policy "is that we do not use AI for anything in any professional capacity that any customer could ever see." The pump for this particular backlash may have been primed by recent Borderlands 4 patch notes, which some players suspected were written or modified by AI. Pitchford insisted that's not the case, however, saying in response to one such accusation that "errors in patch notes are human error." Eventually, Pitchford posted a longer statement saying he was inspired by friends who were "goofing around with making [AI] try to make pictures of itself." "My friends I was with for lunch earlier produced some funny things with similar prompts for themselves and I wanted to see what bullshit it would generate as an idea of a self identity because the idea of an AI even having an identity is nonsense," Pitchford wrote. "The result was somehow more embarrassingly hilarious than I expected and I wanted to share that. "ChatGPT has no information from me about anything from my work because I don't use AI for work and our policy is no AI in any work that could ever be seen by any customer. I'm using my personal phone and not my work computer (which is isolated from personal systems). It got whatever it generated from whatever public knowledge of Gearbox it has access to (hence my very clear disclaimer) and the timing or content of this has exactly zero to do with whatever feelings you've spun yourself up about with patch notes." He then urged followers to "maybe relax a little and have some fun?" That's probably not a bad idea, generally speaking, and honestly I don't doubt that Pitchford was just "goofing around," as he put it. At the same time, I feel like a little contrition would've gone a long way here. As we've seen many times in the past, the use of generative AI in game development is a very touchy topic, and I don't think it's at all surprising that a high-profile game industry executive posting gen AI images bearing the Gearbox logo and various other game dev trappings would elicit a strong reaction, and not necessary of the positive sort. Games industry executives, and more importantly the money guys, may be eager to embrace it, but people who actually make and play games? Not so much.

Borderlands 4 Boss Faces Fan Backlash After Posting AI Slop

Public sentiment around generative AI has been tanking as of late, and few corners of the internet hate the controversial technology more than gamers. So Gearbox Entertainment studio head Randy Pitchford had some explaining to do when he recently shared AI slop on main. In response to Borderlands 4 fans' displeasure, he unofficially outlined the studio's guidelines on using AI, including a ban on using it for anything that might end up in one of its games. "ChatGPT has no information from me about anything from my work because I don't use AI for work and our policy is no AI in any work that could ever be seen by any customer," Pitchford wrote on X on May 4. "I'm using my personal phone and not my work computer (which is isolated from personal systems)." The Gearbox Entertainment cofounder was being dragged for sharing an AI-generated "selfie" based on his interactions which ChatGPT. "I asked my primary AI tool to generate a selfie that indicates how they feel based on how I interact with it and this is what it generated (note: background words were not prompted and have zero relationship to anything real)," Pitchford posted on May 3. The mentions were not kind. "The only people that like Ai are old people that don't know the difference and executives that want to use it to reduce head count and cut costs," wrote one person. "This seriously makes me afraid your company is willing to use AI in the making of future games, and I will be seriously critical of any future Gearbox games directly because of this post," wrote another. Patch notes that sounded off While the studio head encouraged his followers to just "be cool and enjoy silly things," Borderlands 4 fans were particularly sensitive after accusations that recent patch notes may have been written with the help of AI. A blog post outlining the April 30 update included lines like "The Rifts are meant to be scary, but not confusing!" and "We want fights to be both fair and fun." The repetition throughout the patch notes of generic phrasing raised some alarm bells on the Borderlands subreddit and X. "Whole thing reads like its AI written I'm kinda stunned," wrote one player. "I wasn't really buying into the AI Patch Notes thing at first, but re-reading them now and they sound very very different to literally any other notes they've released so far," wrote another. A thread listed a number of places where the patch notes seemed to substitute incorrect words like "acid" instead of the in-game term "Corrosive." Pitchford posting his AI slop days later added fresh fuel to the conspiracy theory. "Posting this right after people were questioning if the patch notes were AI is crazy," wrote Borderlands streamer LilGasmask. This is the comment that prompted the Gearbox boss to reveal the studio's ban on using AI for anything that could be consumer-facing. Pitchford said he posted the image after he and some friends had fun prompting AI to generate "selfies," the latest ChatGPT fad that's definitely not a sign of any tech bubbles bursting anytime soon.