Crimson Desert's bizarre paintings spark fears of AI-generated assets

Crimson Desert was always going to be a game that split the room, and its first two days since launch have only further emphasized just how true that is. Among the conversation points: an unconventional control scheme with minimal ability to rebind your layout, a tremendously vast open world that doesn’t always have the depth to match, and boss battles that can feel like major difficulty spikes. The latest discussion point? Questions around whether some of its in-game paintings might be AI-generated. The hottest-button issue in gaming was bound to rear its head eventually, and here it is.

The Crimson Desert Steam page does not include a disclosure stating that there are any AI-generated assets in the open-world game. Developer Pearl Abyss has even been vocal about its fully human voice cast. Speaking to the Dropped Frames podcast in February, marketing director Will Powers said, “All of our voice acting is by humans.” He notes that this applies across its entire cast of mainline and sidequest NPCs, although stops short of confirming that every single minor character across the whole map has been voice acted.

Some of the game’s paintings, however, are particularly surreal in a way that’s attracting plenty of attention. The most significant of them so far is one, seen below, that’s found hanging over a staircase in Oakenshield Manor, in the southwest part of Crimson Desert’s first big town. It seemingly depicts knights on horseback riding past a crowd of people, except that many of the beasts are strange, two-legged abominations, some even merging into the people supposedly sitting atop them.

Reddit user ‘Rex_Spy,’ who shared the image to the Crimson Desert page, states that they believe it is AI-generated, although they note, “It’s weird because it looks like AI art from a few years ago.” It’s easy to see why they might think that; it certainly has some of the trademark errors you’ll find in pictures pulled from the era where image generation was still very much struggling to find its feet.

Another user, ‘Due-Perspective9206,’ offers a painting they found of two knights supposedly crossing swords, where their blades appear to be swinging cleanly past each other rather than clashing the way you might expect. They ask, “Is this AI generated?” There’s no confirmation for now, and this second artwork, seen below, feels less egregious than the first. Perhaps we could write it off as some surrealist designs, but if these were made by a human then they feel somewhat out of place. Then again, this is a game where you can ride a bear and wear a sci-fi scanning pot on your head.

It’s possible that these were intended to be temporary, and should have been changed prior to launch, but were overlooked amid the sheer scale and scope of Crimson Desert’s world. Last year’s breakout hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 came under fire for Sandfall’s use of gen-AI placeholders that were included in the original release, and then replaced with human-made assets in an early patch. Personally, I miss the long-established developer trend of writing ‘Delete’ or ‘Fix’ in big red letters over anything you’re intending to swap out of a test build.

For the time being, however tempting the evidence may seem, this is just speculation. However, if there are any AI-generated assets lurking in Crimson Desert, whether deliberately placed or with the original intent of changing them before launch, the lack of a Steam declaration would fall foul of Valve’s AI disclosure rules. I have reached out to Pearl Abyss for comment, and will update this story with any response.

I’m also impressed by how quickly the community is digging into the smaller details, although I’ll admit that I’m quite a fiend for inspecting tiny environmental flourishes like signs and paintings, so perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised. Be sure to read Paul’s Crimson Desert review if you’re still planning to take the plunge yourself, because while Kliff and company’s adventures will be exactly the thing some players want, it definitely won’t be to everyone’s tastes.