{"id":566325,"date":"2026-05-04T21:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T21:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/566325\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T21:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T21:14:12","slug":"borderlands-4-boss-faces-fan-backlash-after-posting-ai-slop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/566325\/","title":{"rendered":"Borderlands 4 Boss Faces Fan Backlash After Posting AI Slop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public sentiment around generative AI has been tanking as of late<\/a>, 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\u2019 displeasure, he unofficially outlined the studio\u2019s guidelines on using AI, including a ban on using it for anything that might end up in one of its games.<\/p>\n

\u201cChatGPT has no information from me about anything from my work because I don\u2019t use AI for work and our policy is no AI in any work that could ever be seen by any customer,\u201d Pitchford wrote on X on May 4<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m using my personal phone and not my work computer (which is isolated from personal systems).\u201d<\/p>\n

I use ChatGPT essentially as a search engine. I recently started fooling around with the image generation as some friends were goofing around with making it try to make pictures of itself. <\/p>\n

Prompt was: \u201cMake a picture of yourself as if you worked at my company, Gearbox\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/tXHDeS3yDr<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) May 4, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

The Gearbox Entertainment cofounder was being dragged for sharing an AI-generated \u201cselfie\u201d based on his interactions which ChatGPT. \u201cI 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),\u201d Pitchford posted on May 3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The mentions were not kind. \u201cThe only people that like Ai are old people that don\u2019t know the difference and executives that want to use it to reduce head count and cut costs,\u201d wrote one person. \u201cThis 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,\u201d wrote another.<\/p>\n

Patch notes that sounded off <\/p>\n

While the studio head encouraged his followers to just \u201cbe cool and enjoy silly things,\u201d 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<\/a> included lines like \u201cThe Rifts are meant to be scary, but not confusing!\u201d and \u201cWe want fights to be both fair and fun.\u201d The repetition throughout the patch notes of generic phrasing raised some alarm bells<\/a> on the Borderlands subreddit and X.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhole thing reads like its AI written I\u2019m kinda stunned,\u201d wrote<\/a> one player. \u201cI wasn\u2019t 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\u2019ve released so far,\u201d wrote<\/a> another. A thread listed<\/a> a number of places where the patch notes seemed to substitute incorrect words like \u201cacid\u201d instead of the in-game term \u201cCorrosive.\u201d<\/p>\n

We have Corrosive element, not Acid. pic.twitter.com\/GKhrc3pMKE<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 EpicNNG (@EpicNNG) April 30, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Pitchford posting his AI slop days later added fresh fuel to the conspiracy theory. \u201cPosting this right after people were questioning if the patch notes were AI is crazy,\u201d wrote<\/a> Borderlands streamer LilGasmask. This is the comment that prompted the Gearbox boss to reveal the studio\u2019s 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 \u201cselfies,\u201d the latest ChatGPT fad<\/a>\u00a0that\u2019s definitely not a sign of any tech bubbles bursting anytime soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not machines,\u201d Pitchford wrote on X. \u201cWe are people. We aren\u2019t perfect. We are messy. Especially me. Maybe relax a little and have some fun? Creating entertainment is my life mission. You are a customer, presumably, because you want to be entertained. If your idea of being entertained is to spend your time posting what you posted, you do you, I guess. Thanks for supporting our human-made entertainment, warts and all!\u201d<\/p>\n