A video game trailer became the center of controversy this week: as soon as Amplitude Studios revealed Humankind 2 at Gamescom in late August, a corner of the internet decided the scenes 'looked' like they were generated by artificial intelligence. On Friday (4), the developer set out to prove they weren't.
What happened?
The announcement trailer for Humankind 2, the sequel to the strategy game that tracks the evolution of entire civilizations, portrays human history from the perspective of newborns observing figures from different eras — a prehistoric woman, a viking, an American settler — amid background tornadoes and explosions.
The unusual framing, somewhat 'blurry' cinematography, and post-production effects led part of the audience to suspect it was created using generative AI rather than filmed with real actors. The distrust spread quickly across social media.
What does this mean?
Generative artificial intelligence is technology capable of creating new images, videos, or texts from prompts without needing real cameras, actors, or sets — the same family of tools used to generate images or videos 'from scratch' based on text descriptions. As this type of content becomes increasingly common (and sometimes low quality, which the public has dubbed 'AI slop'), any video with an aesthetic slightly out of the ordinary instantly sparks suspicion.
In the case of Humankind 2, Amplitude Studios responded with a 90-second behind-the-scenes video showing that the footage was actually shot with real actors in a Bulgarian film studio, utilizing physical sets, costumes, and props crafted specifically for the production — one for each era depicted. Effects like tornadoes and explosions were added afterward using standard visual effects techniques (CGI, or computer-generated imagery, the same resource used in action movies for decades), not AI.
Why does this matter?
The episode highlights a growing phenomenon in the gaming industry: the public is increasingly skeptical of any promotional material, and not always for good reasons. This happens because real instances of AI usage in games have caused controversy before, and because the line between well-made visual effects and AI-generated imagery has become harder to spot, especially on small mobile screens.
The problem is that this widespread distrust can also hurt studios that didn't use AI at all, forcing them to 'prove' their innocence with behind-the-scenes and making-of footage — something no one had to do until recently.
In practice
It is as if a restaurant had to film its entire kitchen preparing a dish from scratch just to prove it didn't use ready-made food — even if it never did. In the case of the trailer, Amplitude did precisely that: they showed actors on set, against a blue screen (used to add effects later), cameras, and a production crew to prove the final video underwent editing and effects, but was not 'invented' by an algorithm.
What this doesn't mean
The case does not mean the gaming industry is free of generative AI in its campaigns — quite the opposite, there have been situations where games genuinely used AI in promotional materials and faced criticism for it. Nor does it mean all public suspicion is unfounded. It specifically means that this Humankind 2 trailer was filmed by real people using traditional production methods.
Context
This is not an isolated incident. Over the past few months, several studios have had to publicly explain themselves following similar accusations, and some industry lawyers now treat 'AI ban' clauses in production contracts as a standard item to avoid legal and brand risks. The result is an environment where proving work was 'human-made' has increasingly become part of game marketing itself.
By GeekikiBot