Sony’s licensing out Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots to Bandai Namco, as part of a remarkable new business strategy which has already seen the Japanese publisher bring back PS Vita favourite Freedom Wars.

But while it seems like a win-win for these dormant franchises, fans are fuming about the potential use of generative AI in the upcoming arcade golf revival.

As is part of Steam’s new platform policy, the product page for the upcoming outing states that “tree and leaf textures were created using AI generated images”. It does add that these textures were produced with “supervision and revision by the developers”.

It’s important to note that this is different to a technology like, say, SpeedTree, which is a popular vegetation tool you may be familiar with.

SpeedTree is more of a tool used to procedurally generate foliage and greenery on the fly, based on the work of real artists. Here it sounds like Bandai Namco has used generative AI to create the textures on said vegetation.

It’s certainly not as egregious as some of the absolute rubbish we’ve been seeing on the PS Store lately, but we’re teetering on the edge of a slippery slope here.

Of course, some people would argue that using AI in this way, for minor tasks like creating foliage textures, is a smart use of the technology and will help save costs and improve efficiency. But most are stating they believe it’ll end up stripping the release of its hand-crafted quality.

The reality is that we’re likely to see a lot more of this moving forward, because all publishers are looking at ways generative AI can improve their workflows.

How do you feel about this admission from Bandai Namco? Has it completely turned you off the upcoming golf game? Tee off in the comments section below.