I won’t comment on the quality of Marathon, the game, because I’ve not had the chance to play it, though obviously it’s not been received with all that much fanfare. You know what I did quite like? Marathon, the short film, the one that came with the game’s reveal from Alberto Mielgo. It felt like a strong promise of a (more-or-less) fresh sci-fi world, the performances were subdued, it felt larger than life. Good stuff! Yet as many things currently are, it’s been scrutinised over potential AI use, prompting Mielgo to put out a (understandably aggro) statement.
Taking to Instagram, Mielgo said that he couldn’t believe “we’ve reached a point where I have to clarify this, but here it goes: this is not AI. HELLO.” He went on to note that everything in the film, including “paintings, animations, 2D and 3D work, compositing, and renders [were] done with [a] huge team – 155 incredible people and hell of hours, days, months… Yes, our Achilles’ heel: time.”
On the topic of what Mielgo’s personal opinion on AI was, he perhaps more sheepishly noted that he has “no idea.” To his credit, he followed that up by saying that “AI will never take away my (your) urge or joy for making art and painting. That part will never be replaced.” He then sort of ruined that sentiment by finishing with the line, “this text was kindly edited with ChatGPT,” a line written so dryly I honestly can’t tell if it’s a joke or not (I hope so).
In seemingly now-deleted comments on the same Instagram post (via The Game Post), Mielgo responded to someone asking about Marathon’s plagiarism issue, obviously a hot button topic in the world of AI, and his thoughts on the fact that some of these plagiarised assets may have been handed off to the director to make his short film with. He explained, “you know what I hate the most? Working our asses off for years to create something cool, only for it to get eclipsed by sphincter smelly press and headline readers. Go whistle around.”
To be unfair to both Mielgo and Bungie, there has been a pattern of plagiarism issues at the studio over the years. A one off is one thing, but this is notably questionable. Anyway, I do think people should stop trying to sniff out AI use because annoyingly the stuff is getting better at making “art”, so let’s put our focus into just completely snuffing it out, yeah?
