{"id":30494,"date":"2025-07-29T06:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T06:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/30494\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T06:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T06:57:11","slug":"alleged-ai-hearthstone-art-riles-up-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/30494\/","title":{"rendered":"Alleged AI Hearthstone Art Riles Up Fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re a fan of\u00a0Diablo\u00a0Immortal and Hearthstone, exciting news! There\u2019s a crossover event on the way. But in actuality, you might be too distracted by the likelihood that Blizzard has used AI-generated art (again<\/a>) to create promotional materials. Fans have taken to social media to point out what look to be telltale signs of slop, and the evidence is pretty convincing. But here\u2019s the thing: even if this isn\u2019t AI, or wasn\u2019t produced entirely by AI, the fact that we\u2019re reflexively scanning the minutiae of various images speaks to the state of fear this rampant technology is instilling in us. No bueno.<\/p>\n

Ring Psychology: Understanding The 6 Phases Of A Wrestling Match Through Heel Era John Cena<\/p>\n

Over on Reddit, a surging post on r\/hearthstone<\/a> (ht to our comrades over at Endless Mode<\/a>) documents the AI crimes apparently on display in this promotional art. Have a look:<\/p>\n

\"Promotional<\/p>\n

Image: Blizzard \/ lpyreable<\/p>\n

A weird ear formation, a hand that seemingly blends into the wall, and odd occurrences of other objects melting into other things all point to the likelihood that this image, at least in part, was created by AI. To play the contrarian that I am for a brief moment, I\u2019ve spent enough time in Photoshop to know that quick comp work that\u2019s often done on a tight deadline due to corporate demands can produce similar effects. Assets get borrowed from previous work, and how layers intersect with one another isn\u2019t always paid direct attention to. <\/p>\n

Kotaku has reached out to Blizzard to verify whether or not the image is AI, but did not hear back prior to publication.<\/p>\n

When humans produce similarly weird things, it\u2019s usually an oversight, and in marketing, that does happen more often than you probably think. When AI does it, it\u2019s because it doesn\u2019t understand the image it\u2019s creating. It\u2019s just using patterns of pixels it\u2019s digested from gobbling up other people\u2019s art. <\/p>\n

As many folks have pointed out, another reason why it\u2019s highly likely that this is produced by AI is that Microsoft owns Blizzard by way of its Activision purchase a couple of years ago<\/a>, and Microsoft loves AI<\/a>. And it\u2019s particularly sucky, as Hearthstone fans have highlighted, that the game \u201cprides itself on its artwork<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

Swim around in this same Reddit comment thread or elsewhere on the internet, and you\u2019ll find some pushback to fans\u2019 concerns. These people\u2019s counterarguments essentially boil down to \u201cWho cares?\u201d Or the assertion that some people just always need something to complain about, and AI is just another thing for folks to score virtue-signaling points on the internet with. <\/p>\n

To that, I\u2019d say not so fast. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s so obvious that AI has been created and deployed specifically to eliminate labor<\/a> (and with seemingly zero concern for the potentially irreversible energy impact on our dying planet, Cloud), that the deep concerns so many feel are not just about weird melty hands and odd ear physiology. They\u2019re about what those things represent, what message this medium is communicating to those of us who value humanity in the artistic process or desire to become masters of art forms ourselves, and the fact that companies with massive power are doing what they can to restrict our abilities to sustain our lives, emotionally or financially, with said art. <\/p>\n

This art, if it is indeed created by AI, tells us that our creations don\u2019t have value and that those who make them are no longer needed. You can be indifferent to that, but it is what\u2019s being said, and it is not the world many of us wish to live in.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re a fan of\u00a0Diablo\u00a0Immortal and Hearthstone, exciting news! There\u2019s a crossover event on the way. But in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,4327,733,4308,18808,18805,18807,18806,18811,9319,18810,18809,771,696,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-30494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-slop","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-blizzard-entertainment","tag-blizzcon","tag-computational-neuroscience","tag-cybernetics","tag-data-science","tag-digital-art","tag-generative-artificial-intelligence","tag-hearthstone","tag-kotaku","tag-microsoft","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}