Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is officially out on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. If you pre-loaded the game, you can jump in right now and start your journey with the latest release in the annual shooter mega-franchise, seeing everything this year's entry has to offer. Which, players have immediately noticed, also includes a slew of AI-generated slop used for in-game rewards.
This isn't the first time we've seen Activision use generative AI for assets within Call of Duty. It did so in 2023 for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and in 2024 for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, with both instances facing severe backlash from players. So we can't really be surprised that there's AI slop stuffed into Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, but what is surprising is just how much of it fills the game.
User Kumesicles on X (formerly Twitter) shared an image of the in-game calling card rewards that all feature AI-generated assets, with their post becoming the lightning rod that is drawing plenty of attention, but it's not the only example of AI assets in the game.
Activision also used AI-generated assets within the campaign, and for the prestige icons that players grind hours to attain. It's also likely that there are more AI assets to be found, though at the time of this writing and considering that the game only released today, these examples are the ones that have caught players' eyes and ire the most.
The replies to Kumesicles' post are a quick look at how players feel about the game being stuffed with AI slop for these assets, even if they are a small part of the game. Another look is the game's Steam page, where several player reviews are also criticizing the use of AI slop, on top of other issues with the game, like how the campaign cannot be paused, is always online, and will kick you from a level if you go AFK, forcing you to restart it.
At some point, you really have to wonder what you're paying for here. Cosmetic changes for your character and your profile in games make good goals for players to reach and good microtransactions because they were, historically, carefully crafted by artists to look cool, so that when you saw it, you wanted to grind the hours it would take to earn those small calling cards and profile pins, to have them on your profile as a badge of your own gaming prowess.
Of course, that's not the whole Call of Duty experience, but having a cool-looking profile that flashes when you get the winning kill of a match or make the best play in a round is an ingrained aspect of the quintessential Call of Duty experience. Why should you be getting less than what you got in previous games? It's not like Activision can't pay artists to make something that players might actually want to have on their profiles.
It may be a small element of the game, but it's a big showcase of just how much Activision does not care about getting the details right. So long as Call of Duty remains the commercial juggernaut it's been for over a decade, Activision will continue to degrade its quality to see how much it can get away with ripping players off. Even if Activision backtracks and replaces these assets with art actually made by humans, we have no reason not to expect the same rigamarole next year, likely even more egregious than what we're seeing now.
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