Tim Bender, CEO of Hooded Horse, the publisher behind hits like Manor Lords and Against the Storm, alongside the upcoming Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, says that generative AI has become so "cancerous" that despite guarding "against it in every way", he believes that his company will fall foul of its inclusion at some point.
In an interview with PC Gamer, Bender explains that the publisher has stated that the use of generative AI is not allowed at the company, but understands that it could seep into games due to its prevalence in people's lives.
"It's one of those things that we have a union of being aligned with our developers and with players," says Bender on the topic. "Players don't, by and large, want gen AI." However, despite being aligned on the issue, he doesn't discount the idea that generative AI could find its way into its games.
"We will fuck up," Bender says. "We publish lots of games, and our developers align with us, but at this point it's in the pipelines with art outsourcing. There's people, like some freelancer somewhere, something will have this happen. But what we can do is make a firm commitment. This is that we guard against it in every way we can, and that we will, if it's ever discovered, remove it."
Bender goes on to describe how the proliferation of generative AI has caused issues for Hooded Horse. "It just causes such headaches and has made our lives so difficult, because now we have to guard against this, because the world has become infected," he says. "That's why I used the word 'cancerous', because it spreads. It spreads everywhere. And so now it's a constant."
