NTE: Neverness to Everness is in the middle of an AI storm. Despite its director, Yang Lei, promising "our core assets and character portraits will never touch AI," it took mere hours for players to spot a poster that was an AI ripoff of a popular anime movie, Weathering with You.
Immediate backlash followed in the game's fledgling community, and not long after, Game Award-winning Content Creator of the Year Ironmouse pulled her sponsorship deal with the game, accusing the studio of lying to her. One of the game's voice actors, Meggie-Elise, also threatened to stop working on the game if it was not "addressed and removed."
After almost a week of complaints, Hotta Studio has finally released a statement about its use of generative AI, vowing that it is "already reviewing and reworking" multiple assets in the game.
"Neverness to Everness is built on human creativity," Hotta Studio's statement begins. "The characters, stories, and world you experience are the work of artists, writers, and designers. AI-assisted tools were used only on a small number of background and environmental assets, not on the characters or stories that define this game."
These referenced assets include two already found...
