There was a lot of excitement when SEGA finally revealed the rebooted Crazy Taxi: World Tour at the Xbox Game Showcase, but that excitement soon turned sour as it emerged that the game would utilise generative AI. Kotaku chatted with original series creator Kenji Kanno about the game and its use of genAI and Mr. Kanno said that gen-AI is apparently only being used for a reference point so a human would view the designs and then create the actual thing. Here’s what he said:
“We used it as a reference,” Kanno explained via translator. “So our artists would pull up [and] generate some of their ideas and then they would look at that, you know, generated image and then they would draw the actual thing. So actual creators, everything from programming to assets, everything is made by an actual human. It’s only used as a reference for them to look at and then they would actually create the actual thing that would go into the game.”
“For us, the extent of how we use generative AI is only what I mentioned earlier,” Kanno said. “[It’s] just for ideas and just as a reference. Moving forward in the future [generative AI] is probably going to be more of a hot topic, but I think that’s all I can say right now on how we use generative AI for this game.”
