To almost nobody's surprise.

Due to a new policy change with Steam, Activision has had to come clean and admit that, yes, they do use generative AI to create some of the assets used in Call of Duty. It's something that fans have long since suspected was the case for a couple of years now, at least since 2023's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Call of Duty players that possessed a set of working eyes noticed some visual oddities over the past couple of years with some of the assets showing up in the game. The most egregious of these was a very in-your-face six-fingered zombie Santa loading screen.

Another example, seen below, includes a very red and very AI generated loading screen that was included as part of a $20 cosmetic bundle. Just which way is that person in the image facing?


Yet another example is from this loading screen that was included as a reward for a seasonal event. Be sure to take note of the four-fingered man in the top-center. Maybe also check out how the person at the bottom (the photo with the knife stuck in it) is somehow overlapping the border of the photo on the right side. That's not even mentioning how some of the red "thread" lines change direction abruptly.


One of the worst things about this (besides not paying actual artists to do the work and selling AI content to players) is that Activision clearly didn't even care enough to make edits to the AI output to remove the extremely obvious mistakes before adding them to the game. How do you not notice six fingers on a hand that occupies nearly the entire left third of an image?

It seems like the only reason why Activision admitted anything to begin with is because Valve requires Steam store listings to disclose if developers use or made use of AI generated content. Sure enough, the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Steam page now includes a disclosure about using AI generated content.

Of course, that's as far as the disclosure goes. There are no details on the tools used, the extent to which AI was used, or if content created by AI is indeed being sold to players as many suspect is the case. It's basically the absolute bare minimum in order to comply with the Steam disclosure policy on using AI content.

This disclosure also means that you can now find Call of Duty on SteamDB's new "AI Content Disclosed" search filter. It is just one of nearly 5,000 games sold on Steam that have disclosed that they use generative AI for any purpose.