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Level-5's CEO apologises for AI footage in the studio's own September showcase
Akihiro Hino says the experimental AI in Level-5's presentation was there to make the event look more impressive, and that the games are made by people. Buyers still judge the build from the only asset they can see.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino apologised on X for AI used in footage at the studio's presentation, saying experimental processes were added because the team wanted the event to look more visually impressive.
- The studio said it aims to use AI to cut the development cycle of major releases from five years to two, and that it is still experimenting with the technology.
- Hino said Level-5 had heard fans' anger over the heavy AI use in the September 10 presentation and would take their feelings into account in future showcases.
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Why it matters
- exposure Level-5 now has to defend the contents of builds nobody outside the studio can inspect until launch, because the audience formed its view of those games from footage the studio published itself.
- constraint By Hino's own account AI already sits in the modelling pipeline, so a claim that the work is human-made needs a per-asset explanation that a trailer has no room to carry.
- decision Whoever signs off a showcase asset now chooses between disclosing which shots were generated up front and answering for them once viewers start pausing on frames.
- precedent A public apology for promo footage makes it normal for studios to be asked which parts of any presentation came out of a model.
The person who paused on a shot in the Yo-kai Watch 2 trailer had nothing to check it against. There was no demo and no build to load. All that existed was the footage, and Level-5 published it. The presentation ran after the September 9 Nintendo Direct and carried trailers for Yo-kai Watch 2, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, and Decapolice [1].
Hino's apology draws a line inside the pipeline. "We primarily use AI to streamline the process of digitizing human-created work, such as accurately converting original artwork into polygonal models. Please be assured that our released games do not contain carelessly generated AI output," he wrote on X [5]. He also said Level-5's games, stories, characters, designs and core settings all come from human beings [4]. On that account AI is already in production at the conversion step, and what viewers objected to was generated output in the promo [2].
The same message carries a production target. The studio said it aims to use AI to cut the development cycle of major releases from five years to two, and that it is still experimenting with the technology [7]. Three years off five is 60 per cent of the calendar [11]. A saving that large will not come from converting artwork into polygonal models, and players will hold the assurance about shipped games against it.
Teams treat promo assets as a separate artefact with a separate review, so a generated establishing shot looks like a decision about a video. Users read every published frame as a sample of the game, because before launch it is the only sample on offer. Dexerto reports that fans called out the presentation's overuse of AI, and Hino said the studio had heard the anger and would take fans' feelings into account in future showcases [13]. Dexerto does not say how big the reaction was [12].
Level-5 is asking for trust on a point only Level-5 can verify, and it has spent some of that trust this year already. The gaming community criticised the studio over an anti-piracy message, after players argued that Level-5 itself has made several titles impossible to buy legally overseas [10].
Anyone signing off assets next week has to work out whether the audience sees generated output itself or only a human-made asset that a tool moved between formats. And whether you can say in one sentence which part was generated, and whether that sentence survives someone frame-stepping the shot. The assets where the audience sees generated output and no one-sentence answer exists are the ones that produce apologies, and they tend to be the assets with the shortest review chain. Hino was blunt about the event: "We cannot deny that AI was used extensively on this occasion because we wanted to create a clear and visually striking presentation." [8]
What to watch
- Whether Level-5's next presentation labels which shots were generated, after Hino said the studio would apply the lessons.
- Whether players inspecting the shipped Yo-kai Watch 2 and Professor Layton builds find artefacts they attribute to AI conversion.
- Any detail on which title is first through the shortened five-to-two-year development cycle.