Riot Games Faces Backlash Over AI-Generated League of Legends: Wild Rift Trailer

League of Legends' Wild Rift China posts AI slop that looks like a fever dream you'd have after watching KPop Demon Hunters, deletes it after backlash

Riot's gone and embarrassed itself, again. As spotted by both AroushTheKween on X, and later immortalised on the Wild Rift subreddit, the Weibo account for Wild Rift's Chinese release (which took some time to arrive after it was released elsewhere) posted a horrible AI-generated pile of slop to 'celebrate' the game's third anniversary. The video's since been removed, but it's been corroborated that it had been posted to Weibo, and was still viewable for a short while before it was taken down. Wild rift china version got backlash. from r/wildrift There are times when I fear for our AI-driven future, it's true. But there are other times when a tepid puddle of dogwater like this gets dropped, and I feel a little better -- sure, generative AI is scary, but when a company cuts corners to put artists out of a job, it's clear the people they leave in charge are incapable of not immediately pantsing themselves. This video has so many glaring issues wrong with it, it's hard to imagine how it passed anyone's desk. Let me just go ahead and list some of the ones I noticed: I'd also like to point out the unnerving similarities to Sony's very good KPop Demon Hunters in terms of whatever the hell this model was trained on -- particularly the latter half of "How It's Done" and its crowd shots. Obviously, AI models are useful for plagiarists in that they can be vague about what data they've snatched, but I would bet good money that "in the style of KPop Demon Hunters" was used at some point. Via the text at the end of the video, it appears "异类-Outliers" is an AI "visual production" company (here's their account on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok). You can see their other "work", including a melty attempt at a live-action Evangelion. In other words, while I've reached out to Riot for comment, I can imagine this whole debacle will be chalked up to the fault of a third-party vendor -- despite said third-party vendor obviously being known for producing this kind of trash. The most frustrating part of the entire debacle, to me, is the fact that it's not like Riot is incapable of spending money on this stuff -- if anything, it's a company that's known for it. K/DA took the internet by storm back in 2020, and Arcane is the result of pumping over $250 million into the animation industry, the same industry these models are now shamelessly snatching from, using models the company has spoken out about before. Maybe it's more Tencent's fault. Either way, I'm not shocked that a big corporation doesn't have enough of a wrangle on its foreign social media pipelines -- or that Riot might be surreptitiously keener about gen AI than it lets on. I'm just disappointed.

League of Legends: Wild Rift Backlash Ignites After Fans Call Out 'Fever Dream' AI Trailer - IGN

Riot Games and parent company Tencent have come under fire after fans noticed they allegedly published a shocking AI-generated trailer for League of Legends: Wild Rift. Reddit user Winter_underdog was one of the first to share the footage, calling attention to what is said to be a two-minute trailer for the League of Legends spinoff's third anniversary. Riot allegedly published the footage on Chinese social media website Weibo before removing it following uproar from players. There's at least no trace of an AI trailer for League of Legends: Wild Rift on Weibo at the moment, but that hasn't stopped fans from republishing it elsewhere. The video above features elements that one may find in some of the most blatant AI-generated content out there, including strange facial expressions, bizarre eye movement, and visuals that look like a cobbled together Pixar film. Although recognizable faces like Jinx, Seraphine, and Aurora also appear, it's not always easy to pin down what exactly they're doing as the group puts on what seems to be a KPop Demon Hunters-inspired concert for League of Legends: Wild Rift fans. It's not just the look of the League of Legends: Wild Rift trailer that has fans suspicious that artificial intelligence played a role in its creation. Audio for the video is also a bit off-putting as it leads up to a song with similarly questionable lyrics. No matter how you spin it, fans are not happy with the video circulating online and what it means for how Riot is approaching League of Legends: Wild Rift. While some are happy writing off the third-anniversary video as "bootleg KPop Demon Hunters," others are concerned about what the future of League of Legends looks like. "Why fk around with AI when you have proper animators?" one user added. "Using this much AI is disrespectful not only for the fans but towards the animation industry." Companies across the globe have mostly adopted the use of AI-generated content in their products and marketing strategies as the technology has improved throughout the last five years. Although fans have been particularly vocal when it comes to how Riot may be using AI to fuel its games, it's far from the first entity in the gaming space to double down on it. Activision admitted to using AI for some Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 content after being called out by fans earlier this year. Ark: Survival Evolved fans were also quick to point out AI spotted in a trailer for one of its new expansions. While companies like Microsoft move forward with plans to integrate AI into its digital ecosystem, not everyone is onboard with the role artificial intelligence could play in the future. Minecraft developer Mojang said in March that it has no plans to include AI in its development process. Meanwhile, NieR director Yoko Taro has warned that game developers will lose jobs because of the technology as it progresses.