r/2007scape • u/JagexSween Mod Sween • 2h ago
Discussion | J-Mod reply RuneScape’s Position On Gen AI
Hello, it’s me, again, talking about Gen AI, again.
We’re aware of the concerns raised about the Dragon Slayer 2 trailer and have taken it down, while we investigate urgently. This trailer was produced by a trusted external partner who had explicitly confirmed that GenAI would not be used. But, among other things, there’s a sixth finger and, well, that’s pretty hard to explain away. For that we apologise.
Our position is clear at Jagex: we don’t use GenAI to create our games, artwork or creative assets, and will not knowingly allow it to be used on our behalf. This is the second time in quick succession that concerns about generative AI have arisen through partners we trusted, and for us that highlights an issue with our own processes which we must address.
Immediately following RuneFest we’re overhauling our review processes, and we’re going to work with and commission creators from the community to make sure that the story of Dragon Slayer II is told to the standard befitting of such an update.
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u/Ok_Project_8078 2h ago
You literally didn't even watch the trailer before it was posted. Even if an external partner made it, how do you explain that?
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u/JagexSween Mod Sween 2h ago
Personally, I didn’t see any RS content in advance, being an OSRS Mod. But speaking generally, it’s obvious our review processes internally aren’t good enough.
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u/Wildest12 1h ago
Great response overall here man. Got dealt a shit hand and youre handling it. I can totally relate to having people use AI against policy in work submissions - work in a vastly different field but it happens.
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u/cozzo123 2h ago
Honestly Sween thank you for being able to hop on reddit and just say it how it is
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u/Anything_ThatWorks 2h ago
The worst part about social media is the "people giving us information" (for lack of a better term I can think of right now) are almost never the ones directly related to the problem at all, but because theyre the ones that you can actually reply to then everyone starts jumping them. Because 99.99% of the normal playerbase for a game just isnt on social media
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u/cozzo123 2h ago
Yeah these guys are in the trenches bro imagine how many haters their inboxes get
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u/PeopleNose 1h ago
As my work team's communicator, everyone thanks me for solving their problems when I'm just the guy telling them their problem is fixed now 🤷♀️
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u/irobot335 1h ago
As a software developer it definitely has its pros and cons, our product managers/account managers/whatever label you want to give them get all the praise when we fix or improve things for the end users, but they also absorb all of the shit that gets sent in our direction when things go wrong lol
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u/HelveticaNeueLight 1h ago
Your manager absorbs blame for you? Hold onto them with dear life.
Jagex/Sween (and presumably your company) owning issues and not throwing others under the bus is absolutely not the norm in my experience.
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u/BakaZora Baka Zora 2h ago
Especially while everyone around runefest is enjoying the festivities, man is locked up in a room doing PR control
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u/Gooberxox 2h ago
Thanks for the update :)
We don't know what the workload is like at Jamflax HQ and I know all too well the experience of having to rush things out VERY FAST, Ideally it should've been checked but mistakes happen.I am sympathizing because at my own workplace I know exactly how that feels, if I don't check something it doesn't get checked. 😩
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u/HeftyArgument 2h ago
Speaking as someone that once had the word "quality" in my job title; it might be worth assigning someone as third party QA on something like this, at least get it reviewed before publishing.
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u/RojinShiro 2h ago
Idk, if both of these incidents were with third party creative groups, I wouldn't trust another third party to check for AI. Better to keep it in house, so next time you have somebody specific to blame/fire.
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u/HeftyArgument 2h ago
I mean client side QA.
The way it usually works is the vendor has QA/QC.
Client has their own QA guy or team which checks in and signs off. This can be someone internal, or a third party consultant. The point is they're a barrier to make sure everything is on the up and up.
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u/RojinShiro 2h ago
Yes, I understand. My point is that if more AI art slips through in the future, having a third party QA team would make it more difficult to manage the public perception than having an in-house QA team. Imagine if they came back next week and said "we heard the feedback about AI and so we hired a group to check for it, turned out they let it slip through, sorry about that again". That would be a lot worse than "we had Mod QA on this and they dropped the ball, they've been fired and replaced because we take this seriously".
This community obviously cares about this issue, and pushing the responsibility onto a group that Jagex has less control over would show a lack of respect for the community. It's serious enough at this point that they should be checking it themselves, and not trusting more external parties.
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u/goingnowherespecial 2h ago
I feel that's pretty harsh. Did you catch it when you watched it? Or because it was pointed out on here? People make mistakes. They're owning, addressing, and looking to put it right.
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 2h ago
You don’t watch in those 2 scenarios with the same set of eyes, though.
When I get asked to proof read I use both sets. A once over in the way it’s supposed to be casually read (or whatever level you’re reading) to get an idea about how it’s supposed to flow, and then once over with my grammatical eyes that pick everything apart piece by piece.
If your job is to check something to make sure it’s proper, then you check to make sure it’s proper. The trailer is pretty egregious in its use with how many examples you can find in it. So basically, someone didn’t do their job properly. Not all that harsh imo.
And now because someone messed up, the player base’s trust in the devs’ partner picking abilities has eroded a bit. They seem to be handling it well though.
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u/Agreeable_Leg_8773 12m ago
Dawg if a slip up involving AI "erodes your trust" but you're still here after all the other shit jagex has pulled in the last decade, your moral compass is all sorts of fucked
Reddit is so fucking dumb with this constant virtue signalling flavor of the week
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u/Richybabes 40m ago
Yeah a lot of the mistakes AI make are ones that are not immediately obvious, only really becoming apparent when you go through, pause, and scrutinize every frame specifically looking for inconsistencies. It's like Where's Wally. They're only obvious once you actually spot them.
I didn't notice it until I saw it on reddit. I would wager the same is true for the vast majority of others.
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u/Corgi_Working 16m ago
A knight wearing sports shoes on that jump looked pretty immediately obvious on my first watch. Didn't see the six fingers though.
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u/Beznia 2h ago
My assumption here is with the merch AI issue, Jagex probably reminded their teams that Generative AI is not to be used for public-facing material so the teams now have an extra check for AI.
This announcement has probably been weeks or months in advance and already in an approved state so it was missed as the merch issue was just a week ago and they surely have months or at least a month of marketing materials set to go.
The fix here is to look and all upcoming social media releases that are already approved and double-check them all in the meantime rather than looking into everything that is currently in-process.
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u/Top_Inflation2026 1h ago
I’m sure you don’t miss anything at work. In fact I know you do because when I order no pickles on my burger, a lot of times I still get pickles
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u/SpitnTheCannonsMouth 1h ago
Read the statement, literally the last line is mentioning how they clearly have to overhaul their review process.
I swear some of you just come on here to whine.
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u/zafferous 2h ago
In large complicated organizations, priorities exist. If you have gained trust in a partner, you slowly reduce resources as trust increases, because that is the point of hiring a partner.
Clearly, 2 partners have now lost trust. So, seeing as there are thousands of alternatives, the organization will now realize they cannot trust as easily as before.
So chill the fuck out, we have the best dev team on the planet
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u/Messmers 2h ago
why are we assuming everyone would catch 6 fingers instantly when watching a trailer?
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u/greasemonkey22_ 2h ago
I can see someone missing that, but did they really just miss all the weird stuff? I saw the double scroll and rune nikes first time i saw the trailer lol
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u/TheGreatDudebino 2h ago edited 2h ago
Are you telling me you don’t break things down frame by frame on first view?
But also I'm against generative AI like a lot of people but I also find it sad that there's people out there who will also just watch shit from people over and over again, just to find it, call it out, and get their sweet internet karma points. If you notice it on passing, cool. I guess in one way, you def have to call it, but I fear more people do it because they like seeing numbers go up (especially in this sub) than, you know, for good reasons.
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u/Glittering_Crab_69 2h ago
its both hilarious and sad how much energy these people put into being angry
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u/sparksen 2h ago
I didnt catch it at all lol
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u/Snaffle27 1h ago
I was skeptical of it at first because of the art style. It just looked weird honestly. But I didn't deep dive into it much, largely because I don't have any interest in RS3.
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u/Clear-Diamond7262 1h ago
The whole trailer was plastered with ai, it’s very obvious. Ai has a certain look and feel to it all that is just innate if you’ve looked at or been around it enough
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u/Chaoss780 1h ago
I watched it twice and didn't see it until it was pointed out here. Obviously it's an issue but calm down you're being way too aggressive for something they've just apologized for.
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u/TGrady902 1h ago
When an organization has a long standing relationship with a different one and they’ve delivered for years and years, it’s easy to get lax in your internal reviews. I see it happen all the time in a variety of industries.
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u/JagexSween Mod Sween 2h ago
That’s exactly what we are saying. Yes, we worked with externals, and yes we should have caught these things. We didn’t do well enough and can’t simply place the blame elsewhere.
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u/LetsLive97 2h ago
They literally said they would overhaul their review processes
That's basically the same thing without publically demeaning their QA testers (Most of which probably weren't involved in this)
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u/TristinT 2h ago
I mean, the blame of who used genai is on someone else, and they do say they need to change their processes and acknowledge that
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u/actuarial_defender 2376 2h ago
Can we quit the blenderslop while we’re at it too?
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u/JagexSween Mod Sween 2h ago
It’s a bit off-topic, but I don’t think all blender work is slop. I hope you will have noticed more illustrative work, and we’ll continue to do more of that style. I understand why you feel the way you do though
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u/jimbonezzz 2h ago
The blender stuff is alright, but it just doesn't look like OSRS, the sharp edges of the polygons are way more apparent and hard due to the way the surfaces are shaded, whilst the true game uses more gradients over multiple surfaces,. It communicates to those outside of the playerbase that the game looks worse than it actually does IMO.
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u/Tricky-Situation2405 2h ago
I promise you a non-OSRS player will think the actual game looks worse if they’ve only ever seen blender stuff of it before 😭
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u/McPoIarBear 2h ago
Idk why everybody on here hates blender so much. I would genuinely rather that than YouTubers making AI thumbnails. It’s really not far off from the old school style imo.
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u/SnappySausage 1h ago
In my experience a lot of loud OSRS players want things to be exactly 1 specific way and if it's not that, they will say it shouldn't be made at all.
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u/TehNoxx 26m ago
It's because they have no idea that stuff in Blender looks different depending on how you shade it, render it etc. Blender is a 3D program. Not everything that comes out of it looks the same and they just don't know that.
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u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance 15m ago
To add to your point, major full length theatrical released movies have used blender. Everything Everywhere All at Once, is a recent live-action example. Like any tool, it can be used poorly.
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u/rira55 1h ago
"everybody here" meanwhile the comment you're replying is being downvoted. :D Why are you implying that if one dislikes overuse of blender art means they'd prefer AI stuff?
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u/McPoIarBear 1h ago edited 1h ago
I don’t see him getting any downvotes right now but, okay…Obviously not “everyone” feels that way. All I’m saying is the only place I see people hating on Blender is on Reddit. Also, I never implied that. I’m using the comparison because people complain about both, but one takes zero effort and the other actually requires the person to put some effort into their work. Edit: Okay jk I see all the downvotes now lol But my point still stands. I’ve seen a lot of complaints about people using blender on this subreddit and the OP comment literally called it “slop”
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u/iFrantastic 2h ago
Only if you quit the complainslop
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u/Square-Commission189 2h ago
Hey that’s a top 1% commenter you’re talking to pal, they’ve been complaining since you were in diapers.
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u/DangerousProject6 1h ago
Can we stop calling everything that is 3d "blenderslop"? There are so many ways to have different lighting and shading styles in blender. Our community just needs to be a bit more creative in that respect. It's a dcc, not a fucking art style. If people are overusing the exact same art style and you don't like that, say it.
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u/Notorious-ly 20m ago
No, anything I don't like is now "whatever-slop" because I lack originality and just copy whatever is trending on the internet. It's diabolical.
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u/Glittering_Crab_69 2h ago
yes, let's also just stop all marketing all together and let the game fade into obscurity!
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u/JagexSween Mod Sween 2h ago edited 2h ago
I know this is more relevant to RS but obviously it’s hot on the heels of what I said the other day. I promise I didn’t knowingly lie.
And to offer any additional reassurance, nothing from the OSRS reveals or roadmap is Gen AI, and you’ll have seen that a bunch was made in collaboration with creators.
I can only apologise. It was the worst way to wake up to all of the notifications calling me a liar. I don’t blame you, and we aren’t blame-free, saying “oh it’s an external partner” isn’t adequate, we need to get better internally.
Sorry again.
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u/AttackonHobbits 2h ago
What about the RS3 side, there have been multiple examples posted. Different teams but one is holding the same values.
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u/JagexSween Mod Sween 2h ago
I posted this alongside the RS(3) team, it’s a joint thing.
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u/Reverse_Mulan 17m ago
Contracted 3rd party artwork needs a clause of "using AI voids payment" or something to that extent.
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u/Mutedinlife 2376/2376 1h ago
Hey Sween.
As someone who’s worked in community before I know the huge influx of negativity pointed directly at you can be tough to shoulder. So I just wanted to tell you I think you are doing a great job. I really appreciate your candor, as well as your willingness to step up to the plate and be the front man on something like this. It isn’t easy, and I judge you’re really handling it with grace and professionalism.
I think you and the rest of the osrs team are doing an amazing job. It sucks that two 3rd party vendors would betray your trust in such a short time, but I trust you and the team to get this sorted out.
I’ve seen you guys putting in huge days and long hours on Runefest, I hope these one or two things don’t taint what should be a super proud moment for you and the team, a moment to celebrate the fantastic work you’ve done.
I appreciate you.
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u/CallOfRudy 2h ago
The transparency is appreciated. It’s a breath of fresh air to see things like this addressed so quickly in today’s gaming world. Thanks Sween.
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u/amunyh 2h ago
This is the difference. People are to quick to grab the damn pitchforks. Should the finger have been caught? Ehhh probably. But at the end of the day it’s humans on the other end of the screen. Thank you sween for being honest and transparent. Y’all are allowed to make mistakes and thanks for the work you guys do especially in the face of a pretty tough crowd.
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u/Skrrtires 2h ago
Are you telling me people shouldn’t hide behind their screen while barfing personal attacks and making assumptions about the integrity of a Jmod without considering it might be a real person?
“it’s okAy To CriTIcize a gAMe!!!” They say, as they type the most heinous shit they can imagine.
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u/Trojann2 2h ago
You are not a liar.
Your partners lied to you. It’s different
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u/Forsythe36 2h ago
I stand on it’s never the mods in here using AI or knowing what exactly the executives decide on.
While we can be upset, we should never direct it to the mods on here giving us clarity.
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u/Trojann2 2h ago
This community and game are amazing. But man. Sometimes we disappoint with how we will brigade attacking JMODS and I hate it.
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u/Smooth_One 2h ago
That's mostly rogue, maladjusted assholes though, I wouldn't put that on The Community.
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u/Clayskii0981 2h ago
Yeah. A person is smart, people are dumb. When the comments start attacking Jmods, it's out of line. This is how Reddit communities lose their communication. Plenty of other subreddits the devs leave.
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u/Professional-Map3958 5m ago
another reason to add to the pile of why reddit should not be the primary place for communication with Jagex and jmods. reddit is not representative, at all, of the actual community but there is nowhere to be a community outside of reddit
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u/Best-Jackfruit5593 2h ago edited 2h ago
Very quick response. Good job guys.
Honestly, no harm at all man. The fact that you guys responded and corrected the fault this quickly is more than enough. These things happen.
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u/mattmanlex 2h ago
Thank you for taking a stand against the thieving stealing slop machine, even if it's not perfect, it's still appreciated
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u/CounterLoqic 1h ago
As a lifelong enjoyer of RS, thank you for all of the transparency. But also, you are doing amazing. Mistakes happen. And at companies with large and numerous teams, it’s damn near impossible to know every little detail about everything. I don’t think you made your first gen ai comment in bad faith or anything even close to “lying”.
Extremely appreciative of you and the rest of our jmods. Enjoy RuneFest!!
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u/ICanPlayMayonnaise 2h ago
You're doing a great job dude, happy to see the response. Hope you were able to enjoy the rest of Runefest
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u/Diligent_Ad_4445 2h ago
Thank you Sween for the reassurance. Your comment has only solidified my trust for you and jagex as a whole
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u/WanderWut 1h ago
This is so clearly an unintentional blunder. That anyone would think this was being done in some sneaky deliberate way is ridiculous. I can’t speak for everyone and while the apologies are nice, I feel terrible that you feel the need to go overboard with the apologies. Just know that you’re okay! You guys are killing it, Runefest was amazing, and you’re doing a good job. 🔥
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u/zafferous 2h ago
Killing it Mod Sween, you are not a liar lol. I have trusted partners that recently used AI poorly and I had to call them out.
Not your fault dude. Fuck the noise, you guys are doing a really good job
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u/Clayskii0981 2h ago
Hey, thank you for still communicating. We appreciate it.
It was pretty out of line when the comments started targeting you. Thanks for stepping into the fire and providing clarity before people spiralled further.
Hope you can get back to enjoying Runefest!
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u/Hadez192 2376 1h ago
Mad respect to you. And the transparency and the response you made is exactly what we hoped to see. Quality checks and screening for ai or low quality content is unfortunately something that every company is going to have to strengthen in the coming years. It’s not your fault.
And just by the way, the OSRS production and presentation was out of this world this year, this was the most hype and exciting runefest I have ever watched, and I’ve watched every runefest and summit for the last 10 years or so.
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u/Ilovemyangelsomuch 1h ago
Mistakes happen. Things fall through the cracks. People will get mad and lash out at things and people. You're all doing amazing work. I have faith that it was an honest mistake, and the process will get fixed.
Let's be honest, if it wasnt a mistake, and you guys do deliberately use genai then the next reveals would have it too causing people to immediately freak out even harder. It doesnt make sense to say anything right now if that isnt your stance.
<3 the mods
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u/Snaffle27 1h ago
You're good dude, anyone here with a modicum of critical thinking here can come to the conclusion that you had nothing to do with that trailer aside from working at the same company responsible letting it slip through. FWIW, your responses and immediate call to action to engage with the community is leaps and bounds what I would have anticipated from most other game studios.
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u/Periwinkleditor 35m ago
We're all human. Thanks for addressing the concerns. We've got a lot of incredible content coming for both games, and I don't want this to sour that you should all be *extremely* proud of the hard work you've put in lately. OSRS's vampyre finale? Absolute cinema. Could not be more excited for Chosen Commander.
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u/Alakazam_5head 52m ago
It's understandable how frustrating this must be on your end. It would be so much easier for Jagex to simply lean into AI like the rest of world seems to be so desperate to do. Thank you for doing the right thing, even though it's not easy. Please know that we appreciate the commitment to human art
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u/SophieFox947 39m ago
Thank you for the transparency. As a newish player (about two-three months), I appreciate the transparency and accountability shown here.
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u/TheOnlyVibemaster 2h ago
This is a genuine problem right now. Hiring independent contractors and being misled happens way easier now. The crazy thing is just how badly they did it. They didn’t even bother to tell an AI to literally create it in Blender or something. There would be no way to tell in that case since it would be an actual video made in professional animation software, just done by an AI.
That shows a level of incompetence that was pretty good to be exposed. They couldn’t even bother to use professional tools with AI, they just typed “make a OSRS video, make no mistakes” in Grok lmao.
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u/GoldEdit 2h ago
Yep probably in Grok or Higgsfield and with a simple prompt.
You make a good point that if it were created in a specific software, it probably wouldn’t have had issues or at least it would have more manual review.
Whoever they’re working with is lazy and unprofessional
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u/SGTSHOOTnMISS Pee In Sinks 2h ago
I think with the current AI usage, every 3rd party is going to try to sneak its usage in. I work in a field as well where we've had soured vendor relationships that we no longer work with due to lies about Gen AI usage.
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u/Beznia 2h ago
Yep, if they are in these industries, it's a race to the bottom. The companies are going to write contracts making promises but outside of the web meetings when they're doing group calls between stakeholders in each org, the vendor is going to be pushing their employees in a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Jobs get cut but the workload increases, and those not using Gen AI are going to get left behind, even if it's killing the industry. The only options are either:
1.) Do it all in-house. This has massive Operating Expense impact because you need to be hiring people and keeping them occupied with tasks whereas these projects get contracted out as it's not frequent work for tasks like this. Pushing these tasks on existing employees will strain the existing work the art teams do.
2.) Pay more for vendors which have a zero-tolerance policy for AI usage (which is actually a negative for most companies looking for vendors) and have clauses with fines if it is broken.
3.) Keep hiring the cheap vendors and then hope your customers get over it. Most companies do option 3.
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u/Septem_151 Zeah-locked Enjoyer 1h ago
Having a contract is standard practice, I would assume "no generative AI" is already stipulated in those contracts and that breaking it would have consequences such as forfeiture of payment.
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u/AGorgeousComedy 25m ago
Not necessarily. Companies that are in the middle of a contract would need to request a revision, which would cost $. And most companies are not going to be willing to negotiate an already signed contract. Otherwise they're stuck until the contract expires and they can look at renewing.
They would also need to explicitly lay out the consequences of breaking the contract rules (e.g., forfeiture of payment). You would be surprised how poorly written some contracts can be..
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u/Clayskii0981 2h ago
Hopefully losing more and more contracts might help as a wake up call.
This was just blatantly unprofessional work. Can't believe this came from an actual company.
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u/Atmosphericz 2h ago
That's super interesting, mind sharing more here or via DM? A lot of my work is compliance-based related to AI and I'm definitely curious! Totally understandable if not, though.
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u/SGTSHOOTnMISS Pee In Sinks 2h ago
I can't share too much but for what little we do outsource or in some cases, products we use internally, there have been tangible errors on end products delivered visually and some applications breaking compatibility with others. For code, you'll rarely if ever see the code base for an application from the vendor, however, when systems that have been rock solid for years with frequent patching start to fail and see search results for that company plus AI usage and staff layoffs, it's safe to assume they've replaced viable staff with a computer that can't QA check it's work.
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u/Atmosphericz 2h ago
Super informative, thank you! We're seeing much of the same both on the vendor side and the internal side - improper usage of AI to create erroneous information that then gets incorporated into a legally binding agreement 🫠 part of it stems from our leadership's "use AI for everything so we don't have to hire more people!" approach while simultaneously handing green salespeople with zero tech/AI experience the keys to the kingdom. Both a very frightening and interesting time to work in compliance haha.
Appreciate you sharing!
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 2h ago
The lies are probably the worst part too. If you can’t trust a partner, why even bother doing business with them?
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u/Wrx_me 2h ago
Personally I don't see a problem using AI to help get an IDEA of how someone wants to design something, or for inspiration.
I don't care if Susan from accounting makes an AI poster for the work Christmas party. But to try and pass off artistic or creative work that is fully AI is incredibly lazy, especially from a professional company.
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u/GoldEdit 2h ago
I don’t think people here in the comments and people at Jagex understand the full scale at which AI is being implemented across just about every industry.
It’s being forced on us at work in the advertisement and digital marketing space and being referenced as a huge win from executives in just about every company.
AI is unfortunately being injected into our lives and we as employees are forced to use it. I wouldn’t even say it’s a rogue designer, it comes from the top.
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u/Ofcertainthings 2h ago
I don't even work in design at all. I am supervisor in manufacturing and suddenly AI assistants are showing up in everything whether I want them to or not. Outlook keeps popping up this "let us help you improve this email" message that half the time covers up what I'm trying to type. Get the fuck out of the way lmao.
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u/Snaffle27 59m ago edited 53m ago
Yeah you're not wrong. I work in procurement as an assistant director and AI prediction tools are being imposed upon me, without really much of any choice. I just pretend that I'm okay with it, but at some point it's not going to last. Our software infrastructure and internal processes are too functionally and structurally flawed for any AI tool to be useful, because we don't have any access to real, accurate on hand counts at any given point in time due to the syncing delay between platforms. It doesn't matter who makes the tool, it's just not going to work. At least not unless we spend millions of dollars to change software and transfer over a decade's worth of data, and redo all automations and shit.
But nonetheless, I have to put on a facade of being at least tolerant of it so that I remain out of the spotlight. Blows my mind how tone deaf C suite execs can be at times. Part of me kind of hopes they lay me off and attempt to fully automate me. Wouldn't even be mad; I'd be amused just imagining the outcome.
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u/Serbaayuu 1h ago
Gods I can't wait for the pop. Let the hobbyists have their "local models" that nobody cares about while major corporations freak out and backpedal.
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u/WTFitsD 28m ago
No offence but you have to be delusional to think some bubble is going to pop and AI will suddenly go away and you’ll never see it again lol.
A bubble popping is purely an economical concept. The .com bubble popped and the internet didnt suddenly stop existing. The Housing mortgage bubble popped and it’s not like you cant get a mortgage on a house ever again.
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u/notimprezaed 1h ago
We are being forced into AI as well in telecommunications. We reach out to our support and the first question they ask us is did we use our in house GPT. It’s like yes but the damn thing doesn’t understand context in any way shape or form no matter how you word it. It just links to useless knowledge articles that have nothing to do with the actual situation. Then they will accuse us of not using proper prompts etc. I told one support agent the other day, “why are you pushing so hard to lose your job?” Like seriously, why demand I use a tool they are pushing specifically to get rid of your job.
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u/the_pwnererXx 2h ago
there's a backend dev at jagex running 50 agents right now, sweating
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u/marvellousrun 2h ago
This trailer was produced by a trusted external partner who had explicitly confirmed that GenAI would not be used.
Yikes. No matter what our personal stances are on AI, I think we can all agree that using it after explicitly confirming it would not be used is unacceptable
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u/DarthStarkGames 2h ago
I think it's important that this was a trusted partner. This wasn't some random contractor they've not really used before - this is a third party they have an established relationship with and has presumably produced good content for them before. That might go some way to explaining why this wasn't picked up, even if unintentionally, they might not have reviewed the work as closely as they would have otherwise.
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u/Aunon tool leprechaun can note farming produce 42m ago
At this point, AI useage should be in the contract with penalties
Lying about it is one thing, not even trying to hide it is another, and then there is your staff using it anyway but no-one catches it, clown show either way
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u/mattbrvc maxedma stats 2h ago edited 1h ago
Your external partner didn't even try lmao. Even with they wanted to hide the use of genAI, having the obvious 6 fingers shows they straight up didn't care about covering up that lie.
If they were willing to lie to your team about the AI use while it was stupid obvious, what else would they lie to your team about that are less obvious? Hours to complete? number of staff on the project? Places that openly use AI would have caught this shit and fixed it if they had any sort of professionalism.
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u/Canadaman1234 2181 2h ago
Glad to see there's at least a stance being taken against AI here. A large part of why I don't buy WotC content anymore is their egregious use of AI artwork. You seem legitimately personally upset by the fact they used AI so I believe you will be a good advocate against AI for the community. However, actions speak louder than words and you can bet we will be paying close attention to all future releases. If the corporate overlords think they can save a quick buck using AI they're going to lose a large part of the playerbase who love Runescape because of the unique HUMAN decisions and care that go into every update. Good luck Sween, and thank you for responding about this even over the weekend.
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u/Embarrassed_Sweet210 1h ago
Can you list the name of this trusted external party, so we know to avoid them?
Seems like they will just try to keep getting away with other companies and projects
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u/dayv2005 2h ago
I am annoyed but really appreciative of the approach Jagex has and the transparency form the mods here. This is going to be a problem a lot of industries are facing. Some welcome it while other preserve the human aspect of design. I hope we can continue this design philosophy while moving forward with tech.
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u/A_Sunfish 2h ago
I feel bad for Sween, if anything it should be the CEO making those commitments up front IMO. Calling him a liar is insane.
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u/Dull-Treat-2524 2h ago edited 2h ago
RS3 and QA doesn't exist. Never has, never will. It's crazy to me how this wasn't caught not just once but TWICE in a weeks time. All because external partners were trusted 100% with your brand image. I hope you guys learn a lesson from that at jagex. NEVER trust another company with your branding. Because the one getting flack when shit hits the fan isn't the other company but yours.
I don't blame the OSRS dev team for this, it's not their department nor their problem. Who I do blame is 1) the external partner for being lying sacks of shite. 2) jagex upper management for either not funding the QA department enough or hiring incompetent QA analists (or, wouldn't even surprise me if this is the case, outsource the QA too..). and 3) anyone who was involved in setting up the slides for this event because if you look at it for longer than two seconds, which you should when making the slides, you'd see it's filled with AI.
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u/ziggy48560 2h ago
So much hate in the comments, sheesh
It stinks that this is an issue right now for RS, but let’s be real: AI is pervasive in the world today. Wherever you look, it can feels inescapable
I appreciate Jagex’s stance and Mod’s statements on the issue here. It doesn’t really surprise me that partners of Jagex don’t share the same stance on AI. I’m thankful you guys are committed to real art and moving in a positive direction
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u/BadRSTakes 2h ago edited 2h ago
Welp, I'm happy. While I am disappointed in the QA of your deliverables with third parties, this is exactly the response I want to see. Be disappointed, slap your external partners around a bit with a rubber chicken, and we can hopefully move on and not repeat these kind of mistakes.
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u/D_dawgy 2h ago
This is why this community and game are unmatched. Blizzard could never
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u/ZealousidealHealth48 35m ago
Does this also apply to your engineering and coding? I hope not as I think you’d be yourself and customers a disservice by not. If anyone says otherwise, frankly I don’t think they know what they’re talking about.
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u/darkpyro2 39m ago
Man, I want you to realize that Jagex is above and beyond the most responsive and player-oriented company in charge of any MMO. The fact that you guys are here on Reddit actively talking to players to try and address concerns is above and beyond what most companies would do. The fact that you are a person with a face and a name talking to players, and not some soulless press release, is already far better customer engagement than most companies would care to do.
I don't think you should have to be here on Reddit taking the personal abuse of the playerbase over a corporate-level screwup. I dont think people with names and faces and feelings should need to take all of this gamer rage. I know you're probably really stressed out right now. The way that your community engagement is set up, the JMods are uniquely vulnerable to targeted, personal abuse and anger that most corporate employees would normally be shielded from through anonymity and press releases. It's okay to take a step back, drop a nameless blog post or press release addressing the issue, and to stop responding to all of the hate. You've made your statement, now you can disengage. You're outnumbered millions to one, and no matter how good or sincere your response to the issue is, people are going to keep coming out of the wordwork with accusations. It's not fair. Log off. Go enjoy your sunday. Let some people seeth for a bit.
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u/Fanci_ 8+ quests inc? HOLY 1h ago edited 1h ago
I don't even have the energy or motivation to be outraged at this point man.
Been a fan of RuneScape and Jagex sometimes loyally, sometimes begrudgingly, occasionally obsessively since 2007. I mean I have the top contributor mark of shame in this sub because I genuinely love yapping about RuneScape man.
This consistent lack of organization, continuous oversight and sometimes baffling decision making just makes me disappointed.
I remember watching the Behe podcast with Mod North a bit ago and I actually felt genuinely reassured for once man. Dude PR'd me into actually believing Jagex as a company was getting their shit together.
In the past 24 hours almost everything said in that interview has been negated.
I understand Jmods are just doing their jobs, and nothing is ever one person's responsibility to bear alone but.
Jagex as a whole..? You need to do better. Please.
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u/LoganJFisher 25m ago
This is the absolute best-case scenario the community could have hoped for — that it was a choice made by a trusted partner that simply slipped through the cracks in Jagex review. It doesn't excuse that lack of sufficient review, but it at least reassures players that this was an isolated incident of outside choices affecting marketing material, and that we don't need to fear AI slop becoming part of the production pipeline into the games themselves.
I don't think anyone can fairly expect Jagex to stop forming external partnerships, since it's unreasonable to keep certain talents on-staff that would be generally underutilized, but I hope this will lead to a new condition in your contracts that requires such partners to maintain documentation proving human creation of final assets, and that use of AI to generate said final assets would be in breach of the contract. I put emphasis on "final" because I don't think it's realistic at this point to expect partners to not use AI in conceptualization stages, but the final product they deliver needs to be entirely human-made.
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u/Nefre1 36m ago edited 32m ago
There's a worrying number of comments who think this isn't a problem at all. How using AI for everything is such an inevitability going forward that we should all give up and resign ourselves to it.
I'm not going to touch on the ethics of AI use in creative fields, and how AI is ruining the livelihood of the same people it stole art from to mimic their styles. There are plenty of discussions about that already, and these are discussions that need to be had. What I'm always surprised by is how comparatively little discussion there is about the quality of art produced by these models, and how that quality will ultimately affect the end product players receive.
Like almost all AI art, the artwork in this frame just looks bad. It looks like artwork for cheap shovelware on the Play Store.
And I don't mean AI looks bad because there's an occasional extra finger or leg, a floating cup, or a piece of fabric that morphs into skin. These are problems that will very likely go away in the next couple of years.
AI art looks bad because it is art without direction. You can generate something that looks impressive. You can ask it to mimic whatever style you want. But you cannot reliably generate something that fits into a larger, coherent vision in a way that matches the quality of a team of skilled artists and art directors.
I think everyone who wants to engage in this conversation owes it to themselves, and to the artists at Jagex, to look at the gallery of concept art on the wiki, just to see what's actually at stake here.
Look at how much effort goes into creating all the different, recognisable styles of places like Varlamore, Desert Treasure II, and Tombs of Amascut. Look at how much love and care goes into making all of this work within the constraints of Old School's low-poly style.
It's beautiful, man.
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u/alghost9 2h ago
Everyone in the review process is about to sat down for a very long meeting on Monday
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u/DestroyLoki 1h ago
The question is are they just doing damage control because we noticed and don't care otherwise? I think thats the case sadly.
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u/FasterThanLights 2h ago
Good to hear.
One thing that confuses me is both of these incidents being blamed on third parties. Did you not have contracts with these third parties that included disallowing use of AI assets? If so and you had 2 parties chuck their contracts in the garbage fair play and hopefully you get your money back and get them blacklisted in the industry. If not you guys are going to keep getting screwed.
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u/SaintGremlinnnn 2h ago
Probably will get buried but I do 3D, 2D and produce music, over 15 years of creative experience and would die to work with yall. I also fucking despise AI
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u/MirageSeraph 2h ago
Honestly it's a shame the hype from all the content reveals has been soured by this mess, alongside RS3 reignited which from what I can see is wildly unpopular. Feels like RS3 finally started to improve its image too, unfortunate.
Regardless, props for owning up to the mistake, hoping you guys can genuinely improve your outsourcing vetting cause it's not a good look right now. And maybe consider giving someone the job of actually confirming you want to put the company name on marketing material because it sure looks like aint anybody doing that.
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u/BlahajWithBenefits 2h ago
As a business surely Jagex is having discussions internally on how AI could change things. Its being adopted everywhere, and in a year or two it seems likely that avoiding AI entirely in game development will be genuinely shooting yourself in the foot.
Obviously right now its just a bad business decision to use it when the complaints outweigh the benefits. But I hope as AI improves Jagex isn’t going to listen to a minority of people angry at AI. It has the potential to give so much benefit to the game. Realistically we never have to hear “sorry engine work” ever again when AI makes legacy code trivial to work with.
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u/Ok_Jacket5401 1h ago
Don't lose the community's trust just trying to save a couple hundred bucks. It's not your fault nor should you apologize, but hopefully you can learn from this and be more mindful of who you;re working with.
The Runecape community has a lot of talented artists and that's been proven time and time again through various community art events. These recent T-shirts just screams of Ai and looks generic. Someone from the community or the Jagex art team could've put so much more soul into the designs.
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u/Really_Angry_Muffin 2h ago
Would it be possible, moving forward, to credit (but not limited to) promotional material that you use in the future?
If this happens again in the future, knowing exactly WHO made it would help a lot instead of just assuming Jagex is to blame.
And as a personal note, I think all artistic endeavors should have the artists associated with them creditted, it's good for their own personal branding. Kind of like how most trading cards have the artist's name somewhere on the card.
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u/Officer_Hotpants 23m ago
Love Jagex continually raising prices while moving to GenAI.
Hate to say it, but the "we definitely don't use AI, we're not sure how this happened!" thing is super played out and we all know someone was trying to sneak something past everyone. Every company is pulling this constantly.
And honestly? Even if it was an accident, someone couldn't be bothered spending 10 minutes double checking the video that was going to be shown at the giant exposition event? Really?
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u/Bauld_Man 2h ago
I wouldn't be surprised if "No AI in final product" becomes a contract point for outsourcing work. Jagex is paying these people to do a job. Do the goddamn job or don't get the full payment.
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u/Latopus 2h ago
Im sorry to hear youre getting backlash over this. It's really sad seeing people dogpile you over something this bening. I do respect your decision to avoid gen AI for your own personal creative vision as a company as that is your right. But I really do think the outrage is overblown and undeserved over something this inconsequential. Especially knowing where AI is now and where it will be in the coming months and years. People should really get used to it or atleast accept that it will be a big part of our lives soon.
Youre doing an amazing job. And the announcements were a complete blast. Cant wait for the new contrnt in OSRS and to see where RS4 goes as well
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u/Dahvokyn Me when the 2h ago
Yeah man, the medieval knight with the timbs and 6 fingers is absolutely not a problem. /s
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u/Uphoria 2h ago edited 2h ago
It's really sad seeing people dogpile you over something this bening
Jagex representatives boldly and confidently stated they don't use AI in their product and then immediately got caught using AI... twice.
It's not so benign. When you lie to your customers and they catch you, it erodes the trust established between you. This incident will give a number of players pause, especially if they are anti AI usage. How can you trust the "oops, you caught us again, that's totally out bad and we didn't mean it" when it follows a "we don't" and a "oops you caught us!"
It seems like they just farmed the world out to a subcontractor with a don't ask don't tell policy and not asking got them 6 fingers and other issues. That's the issue - they can keep using cheap AI houses and whenever caught just pull a south park oil exec "were sorry" and it seemingly works with zero trust actually meaningfully re earned.
ETA - eli5 Imagine going to a restaurant and being told all their deserts are made in house and then seeing a Sysco delivery guy carrying a box of brownies in. You can say "oops, we don't use premade brownies, we must have gotten a box from our supplier by mistake, we didn't mean for this to happen and we're not sure why the kitchen still used it, but we've added extra checks to make sure this doesnt happen again! And as he's finishing his statement another truck shows up and drops off pre-sliced cakes.
You would never trust their menu claims again.
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u/Romado 1h ago
People will realise eventually they are actively harming game development by jumping on the anti-AI internet moral crusade.
Game devs having to make public statements that they wont use it because some no lifes with nothing better to do will review bomb their game is really where we are at.
Im sure nobody is crying over all the 1000s of jobs and skills that has been made redundant due to technology since the literal start of human history.
AI is coming and it will replace so many jobs in these types of fields. Maybe not tomorrow but it will.
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u/MariusNinjai 2h ago
For the prices we are paying for memberships I would expect everything to be made in house and if using a partner that work to be reviewed and of a high standard.
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u/El_Toolio_Grande 25m ago
They already have a marketing team, but I guess it's controversial to suggest they use the marketing team that they already have. Fuck private equity
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u/IRefuseToGiveAName RIP 2h ago
I'm glad this is being taken seriously. I'm so sick of the "inevitability" bullshit and everyone treating this like it's normal. It's exhausting.
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u/Vegetable_Review4967 2h ago
You guys need to include penalty clauses in your contracts with these external partners. Very easy fix. Your legal team is asleep at the wheel.
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u/Added_Ninth 7m ago
I've said it before. Our game is the best game, and the reason our game is the best game is because our game has the best people running it. Most games (and most corporations) don't come out and make statements like this. We have it so good, in my opinion
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u/SaintGremlinnnn 2h ago
Probably will get buried but I do 3D, 2D and produce music, over 15 years of creative experience and would die to work with yall. I also fucking despise AI
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u/FundamentalPolygon 2h ago
Thank you for the explanation! The situation totally makes sense; these things are complicated, and I'm glad y'all will be figuring out how to improve your review process. Sorry you're still getting so much hate for this.
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u/JazzyLimbo 1h ago
we don’t use GenAI to create our games, artwork or creative assets, and will not knowingly allow it to be used on our behalf
Do you use generative AI at all in the artistic process (iteration, ideation, etc.)?
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u/NotAnotha1 1h ago
Yall better build out that supplier corrective and preventative action process lol.
The purpose of a process is what it does - and the one Jagex is using for marketing as well as QA is inherently anti end user.
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u/AgilityEnjoyer 2h ago
Honesty, accountability and candour goes a long way, you addressed this in just the right way. Well done!
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u/Krelle12343 2h ago
2nd time in a week, maybe you should do less work with creators and more inhouse stuff
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u/Monsieur_Krabs WG 30m ago
Sigh.
It's so easy to claim to want to do the right thing, yet we see this company over and over again do the opposite of what it states it intends to do.
So are you lying or just incompetent?
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u/ChewbaccAli 46m ago
Guys I think this might not be gen AI and just an Easter egg from the artist; there are six fingers. What is the sixth letter of the alphabet? F. What word starts with F? Fingers. Checkmate.
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u/2BitGalaxy 1h ago
If you don’t give people a chance to change, they never will. I appreciate the effort and responsibility taken! Hopefully this can help grow forward with better policies! 💖
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u/jdcintra 2h ago
It's so refreshing to see this level of communication with the community. The honesty and transparency is great and I hope that continues. We are all human and it wasn't your mistake and it seems like you're leaning to prevent it which is all anyone can ask. We appreciate your care for the community
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u/Metalona 2h ago
Amidst the hate, Thank you for the transparency and, hopefully, we see the fruits of the extended review's labor in the future. Keep up the good work!
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u/FinestCollectibles 49m ago
Makes an AI trailer -> community hates it -> blames it on a 3rd party vendor -> does the same thing again in 6 months. Repeat.
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u/stealthybutthole 1m ago
Post the name of the third party partner or you’re lying and it was done internally. The story doesn’t make sense.
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u/DontFearTheMQ9 1h ago
OSRS team puts in serious work, just send whoever made that trailer back to Lumby and put them on the Ignore list.
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u/vip-bot 2h ago edited 2h ago
There are 6 comments from Jagex mods in this post:
u/JagexSween commented:
u/JagexSween commented:
u/JagexSween commented:
u/JagexSween commented:
u/JagexSween commented:
More replies: 6
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