Guitar Hero is a game that many people find nostalgic. Many millennials spent hours rocking out in their basements to their favorite songs while attempting to hit the right buttons on the guitar-shaped controller. The series has been dormant for many years, seemingly becoming a gaming fad that will never see the light of day again. However, Activision announced on February 28 that a new Guitar Hero game would be released on mobile, leaving many fans excited. The excitement soured a little when people saw the promo picture, which many suspected was created by artificial intelligence (AI).
Guitar Hero Mobile AI Controversy
This isn’t the first time Guitar Hero has released a title on the mobile platform. Guitar Hero 3 Mobile was released in 2007 and was loved by many series fans. The 2015 version was met with mixed results, and we haven’t seen much from the series since then. The post on Instagram got many excited, but the use of AI on the promotional image got the internet buzzing. It was a glaring mistake by the marketing team.
The staple of any Guitar Hero game is the note tracks. Each color corresponds to a certain button on the controller or section of the screen. In the promo image, there are different colors on different note tracks. Furthermore, some of the finer details are not quite right, which is a staple of many AI-generated images. It has led many fans to express their disappointment with others straight up refusing to buy the game when it is released. It is important to note that no one has confirmed that this is AI. The AI conversation is one that isn’t going away, but this snafu teaches a clear lesson.
An AI Lesson
AI is a tool and should be used as such. Anytime you log into ChatGPT or any other platform, it warns you to check your work. The tool can get things wrong, and you might have to fix it. It seems the marketing team populated an image and then didn’t bother to look closely at it. Had there been a pause, they could have caught some obvious mistakes in the image. Blindly copying and pasting is what makes many people dislike AI so much.
That said, there is a huge amount of hate for the tool. While I do not want all of my games, movies, and promotional material to be AI-generated, I understand a company trying to use cutting-edge technology in order to improve their work. Hopefully, this can be a lesson for everyone involved. Check your work and don’t blindly use any tool. Again, this is all speculation on how the marketing department works and should be taken as such.
Final Thoughts
It will be interesting to see what the response from Activision is on this controversy. Will they ignore it, or must they address it to try and curry favor with their fan base? The release date was not given, so we will have to wait and see what the next iteration of this series will bring.
