The Pokémon 'AI plagiarism' row engulfing Palworld raises so many questions

Palworld is Steam's latest hit game having scooped over two million users in 24 hours, selling 5 million copies in three days, and this despite social media users came out to criticise the game for 'plagiarising' creature designs from Pokémon and for accusations of AI use. Neither of which have been proved. But the suggestion of AI use hasn't harmed player rates or reviews, so are we in a new era of AI-washing?

The Japanese developer Pocketpair released Palword into early access on PC and Xbox on Friday and immediately began burning Epic Games' servers; the survival game, a kind of 'Pokémon with guns', is on track to be the next trending game, up there with Fortnite. So does it matter if Palworld's developer Poketpair has a dark cloud of AI use lingering above it? It seems not, as success and popularity can 'AI-wash' a game, apparently.

Co-founder of Good Vibes Gaming, Derrick Bitner, wrote on Twitter: "Palworld's success is proof that, despite protestations, most people will cave & use an AI product because of some loophole. "It’s fun" "It doesn't feel like AI" etc. It'll be a sad day when this happens on a wide scale for other creative endeavours. Books, music, art. It sucks."

While many fans have pinpointed where they see similarities between Palworld's 'Pals' and Pokémon's creature designs, including one Twitter user who created a side-by-side breakdown and others who are picking apart the designs. See some below.

But not everyone is convinced, as respected game dev and consultant Rami Ismail outlined on Twitter: "I'm getting spammed with questions about Palworld so I'll for now, my stance is that I don't consider it a clone of Pokémon even remotely, but I super don't love how close some of the Pals are to Pokémon. Additionally, as of yet I haven't seen anything that suggests AI use in dev."

And to be clear, there's no evidence Pocketpair has used AI to copy character designs or in the creation of Palworld, despite the studio's CEO once sharing a Reddit post of how Pokémon designs can be made using DALL-E (see below). The game doesn't play like a Pokémon game, it's closer to Rust in terms of game design, so are Nintendo fans picking on a game for being, well… generic?

The issue seems to be the developer's stance on AI; in the past its CEO Takuro Mizobe has praised AI and content created using AI. He theorised a time when the term 'illustrator' won't refer to a person but an AI model, with 'analog illustrator' becoming a term for human-made art. 

If that didn't raise questions, the same developer released the game AI: Art Imposter for PC that literally uses an AI image generator as a gameplay mechanic. For a while now the developer has seen itself as a disruptor, adopting, discussing and using AI for game development.

The issue of artificial intelligence abusing copyrights really gets to the root of why many artists dislike the charge towards more uses of generative AI. I've spoken to many artists who have had their work copied, including Kelly McKernan who shared how it has impacted her. 

The recently leaked AI database has shown why so many professional artists are affected, too. The sense is, there's an AI gold rush happening to scrape as much as possible before regulation catches up.

Which is why, even the suggestion of a successful game release like Palworld making use of AI hits such a raw nerve with so many. Pocketpair may not have used AI, and to date there is no evidence outside of social media speculation that it has, but its CEO is clearly asking the questions of when and how AI can be used. 

Many video game developers are using AI, if only for early concepts, or in the case of indie developers and AI, to help with coding. So whether or not Palworld used AI for its creature design feels old news, the question for AI use is fast becoming not if but how and when it should be used. And, whether success means using AI becomes a non-story; the era of AI washing could be here as gamers shrug and just play.