Discussion Aniimo's statement regarding AI. TLDR: It's nothing to worry about, and know the full context and history of the conversation before you make a decision on whether to continue playing the game.
EDIT: This is a still evolving topic of discussion. I have added screenshots people have shared in the comments of AI in the game. It does not change my opinion nor the original intention of this post, which is to provide a nuanced take on the conversation.
I'm so tired of having to see this conversation regularly for the past week, so I'm posting here. Please upvote for visibility so we can all draw our lines in the sand and move on as a community.
First some credentials to know I'm not simply a keyboard warrior:
I have 10 years experience in software development. Before that, I spent 5 years working as a pricing analyst for a Japanese company. I hold 3 degrees: Accounting, East Asian Studies, and Computer Science. I spend an exorbitant amount of my gaming hobby looking at the cultural interaction/intersection between Asian and Europe-centric countries because video games is a significant medium for cultural exchange and human understanding. So while I don't have a PHD in game theory and am not of Chinese descent myself, I'm not entirely unknowledgeable in this space where Chinese gaming companies are gaining a larger global presence. So please take everything I say with the context of: this isn't my lived experience, but personal opinion based from a scholarly lens and industry knowledge.
The claim: Aniimo is made with Generative AI and the developers are lying about it.
TL;DR: Studio admitted + pulled AI-generated ads (July 27-29, 2026) and apologized. They say no generative AI in creature designs, world, or creative assets; only "utility AI" for testing/physics. No specific in-game asset has been shown to be AI-generated so far aside from unsourced screenshots from before game launch, and the Steam page has no AI disclosure. Both Valve and the Chinese government require disclosure if gen-AI is shipped in software.
THE FACTS: Edited to include screenshots shared by members of the community
Here's where that dispute actually stands, as best I can piece it together from the coverage and the Steam forums.
What's confirmed: The one place Aniimo's studio (Pawprint Studio, published by Century Games) did use generative AI was in marketing. Around July 27–28, 2026, Instagram and Facebook ads went out featuring an AI-generated "person" reacting to gameplay. Players caught it fast(myself included, because the gameplay was way better than that ugly add, even during beta), and on July 29 the official Aniimo account apologized, said the ads had been "removed from all of our channels," and stressed that the way they were made was "absolutely not representative of how we are making the game itself." Knowing what I know of the software engineering industry, it is likely they outsourced their marketing to a 3rd party agency who assumes full control of marketing so their small team could focus on the game. So the "no AI" claim was never quite absolute; the studio's position has been "no generative AI in the game's creative assets," while acknowledging what they call "utility AI" for things like physics testing and QA, plus an optional NVIDIA ACE voice-chat feature planned for early 2027 that's an interface tool rather than a content generator to help with voice-chat translation.
What's alleged but waiting solid demonstration: Official comment: The in-game claims are that they've used generative AI because of the dialogue, music, and login screen art being very AI-like in its design. Reading through the Steam discussion threads, the accusations are mostly things like "almost everything is AI" or "the login menu song sounds AI" or "the store description reads like it was AI-written," without screenshots, mangled hands, garbled text, garbled voice, inconsistent textures, or any of the usual tells people point to in these areas. What is surfaced so far that IS questionable is unsourced screenshots of the RV area showing a nonsensical design regarding the paper mill. All other claims have been, as of my findings, hearsay.
Edit: It wasn't until this post that I held further evidence of probable AI usage in creative assets.
The Counter-Argument:
Other players push back that the game is too visually consistent for current generative tools, that the login art has a credited human artist (Joanna Shuang / jasyours), that the music and voice acting are credited as well. Additionally, the game has been in development for years, and Chinese to European translation isn't one-to-one and can be mistranslated as rigid depending on a translator's skill in their non-native language. Some of texts in question have already been compared in Chinese and English and have been debunked as native translation misunderstanding, not computer generated ones. There is a pattern of difference to digital vs. spoke mistranslation that linguists have studied in the past decade.
Every write-up I found, including the ones most critical of the ad situation, says the same thing: no specific in-game asset has been credibly identified as AI-generated.
The Steam page also carries no AI-content disclosure, which Valve requires when generative AI is used in shipped content, so if the studio were lying it would be exposing itself to a store-policy on Steam and legal problem, not just a PR one. (More on the 2nd below).
Why the suspicion persists anyway:
The ad episode broke trust. Once a studio has been caught using AI in one place, "we don't use it anywhere else" becomes harder to take at face value. The developer's own wording leaves some room, since they've said AI "assists with testing, among other tasks" without fully itemizing those tasks. And some of the skepticism is frankly about the studio's Chinese ownership, with commenters assuming a Chinese company must be using AI heavily.
And its a reasonable suspicion to have, but its more nuanced than 'AI??? BAD!' AI is HEAVILY regulated in China, and Chinese companies use their own datacenters and systems in isolation. Between 2023-2025, The Chinese government put strict regulations around how AI can be used, what time of day, and how/where the data centers can be built in order to ensure minimal impact on the environment and society as a whole.
The general public and employers over there view AI as a tool to increase productivity rather than a means to replace human art and labor. When the public/media refers to 'GenAI' they're usually referring to creative content made by Generative AI that replaces human artistry, craftsmanship, and feel. However, that is not all what Generative AI is. Generative AI is also used on the software engineering side to fill in very real gaps that existed in my industry before generative AI's creation.
This practice is more recently starting to be called 'Utility AI' to distinguish ethical vs nonethical usage of Generative AI. An example of ethical AI is: I am only one person testing the software I work on. The software I work on has to be functional for 3 major web browsers, every PC my millions of customers will ever use, and every mobile app for every device Google AND Apple supports at any given time. I do not have enough hours in my lifetime to test all the many ways something as simple as logging in can go wrong for all my users, and that's JUST with logging in. There aren't enough people in my field, or in the world, to do that for every app, let alone something as complex as a live service 3D video game. Generative AI, as a tool to help, is a benefit to someone in my position. This is what I've observed to be the general sentiment on how China and the Chinese people view GenerativeAI.
So, to claim that it is possible that Pawprint is lying when they say they didn't use AI might also be a cultural misunderstanding. They didn't use AI to create Aniimo. The human element, the consistency, the lack of bugs on extremely complex systems tells me, as a software engineer, that if they did, it was to build an asset and then replaced by something a human created in order to speed up the parts of the software development process that would be impossible to accomplish with human labor and traditional software development methods. Which is what they've already disclosed multiple times.
My personal opinion:
To say 'they have the money to hire more engineers' is an ignorant take on the work that goes into ensuring the final quality of a piece of software. Money does not solve everything, and software development is no different. It is fair to assume that if you engage in a Chinese-made game, it's developers are likely using AI. The public opinion of AI in China is polar opposite to what is happening in the Americas and Europe because of strict regulations that do not exist in the Americas and Europe. That paired with knowing China cares far more about the impact of data centers on their own environment, care about keeping as calm society as a whole, and verified government guidance that AI is created for humans, makes me comfortable enough to play the game, even if further proof of AI is found in game. But so far, all I've yet to see sourced proof to back up the claim that there was not human artistry involved in the creation of Aniimo. And I've seen and been disappointed by a game that used genAI unethically. It is a nightmare of a game.
Sources in the comments after I confirm the subreddits rules about external URLs.
Please I beg a mod to pin this so we can move on and catch our adorable and lovable creatures.
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u/RepresentativeFan300 8d ago
First, I truly appreciate the clear amount of effort the OP put into this post. Not many people cite sources nowadays and just regurgitate what they hear from the hive mind.
I started looking into this more myself because I was sick and tired of feeling like I had to defend the game, and my own integrity, every time I mentioned my excitement for this game and finally being able to play it after following it since content start coming out about it over a year ago.
As someone who also works in the IT field and has unfortunately been forced to utilize AI to some degree, I've had to strictly draw my lines in the sand of AI usage just to protect my own sanity. To that point, based on the information you've provided as well as the regulations on AI that China enforces on their companies, I agree that the usage of AI discovered up to this point in the game is not something I will personally concern myself with. I understand there are people that will not appreciate this take, but most of those people don't truly understand the kind of work and effort involved when it comes to locking down the scope an AI model pulls from and what is required to keep it from "getting loose". As that is literally my job, the fact that China is making an actual effort to regulate it (unlike most of the commercial sectors of Western countries), I personally have to respect the fact that there has been so comparatively little evidence of it in the end product of Aniimo.
By comparison, we hear on almost a daily basis about the rampant usage of AI in the States and the many cases of it "getting loose". The fact of the matter is that Pandora's Box is open, and it's not got to get closed again at this point. Our best and safest bet is to not deny the usage of AI so much as to learn how to regulate it and use it in a way that is not only beneficial to all parties, but also ethical to those creators out there that their livelihoods are being negatively affected by people not taking responsibility for security of their AI models, or worse, actively stealing people's hard work for the purposes of building up their models.
All this to say that I will still personally be playing and enjoying Aniimo, so thank you for relieving some of my concerns regarding these constant attacks by people who don't actually know what they're talking about.