Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered lead image retracted for using AI

Damn, I’m looking sorry

Blaze Entertainment has retracted a lead image they were using for Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered after it was discovered by fans to have utilized AI in its creation process.

There isn’t a lot of official information on this aside from the apology statement from Blaze. On May 31st, they announced that Duke Nukem was coming to their Evercade platform via two collections. The first features Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered and Duke Nukem 3D. The second is Duke Nukem: A Time to Kill, Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes, and Duke Nukem Advance.

However, as soon as their lead image for Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered hit social media, it was torn apart for blatantly being AI-generated. As it often is, the giveaway is the hands, which don’t seem to know how to hold a gun. There are also some extremely warped perspectives going on with some of the features of the guns. It’s kind of hilarious.

Blaze Entertainment initially went on the defense, saying that they did commission an artist, to which some in the community responded with: “You might want to ask for a refund.” Blaze went as far as stating the artist’s name in a now-deleted tweet, which further insulated the use of AI, as the artist in question describes themselves as a “hybrid artist.”

Duke hates robots

So, faced with concrete evidence, Blaze eventually conceded and put out an apology, via Andrew Byatt, CEO of Blaze Entertainment:

“As part of this, an artist was commissioned to produce a lead image for the new Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered game developed by Blaze Entertainment. It is abundantly clear from the response on social media that the work on this commission has fallen below the expectation and standards demanded by fans due to the artists’ use of AI in the process. We are immediately removing the art where possible to do so and will be announcing a replacement commission in due course that better meets the high standard expected. We would like to apologise to you, all of the fans, who have felt passionately about this enough and please be assured are working to remedy this. We also would like to thank everyone who’s worked on the project to date for their input.”

Yeah, its clarity is pretty abundant. I have to agree with him there.

A Statement from Blaze Entertainmenthttps://t.co/KYGv0KgCxF

— Evercade (@evercaderetro) June 1, 2023

Robots always piss on the parade

To be fair, the first I heard about Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered was through all the ridicule for this image erupting through Twitter. If there is a silver lining here, it’s that any publicity is good publicity.

At the same time, this is a bad look. Blaze Entertainment doesn’t say that the use of AI in promo material was unintentional. If they said, “We were had!” that would be one thing, but they probably don’t want to look foolish. So now, it just looks like they might possibly support the use of AI as a replacement for traditional artists. If that’s the case, where else do they use it? Was the remaster accomplished with machine generation? If so, I don’t want it. I’d rather just download a mod for these games that was put together by a fan using their meaty, human hands.

Duke Nukem might have been the thing that finally got me to add an Evercade to my collection, but just like that, it’s not so certain. I was planning another playthrough of Duke Nukem 1 and 2, but I think I’ll just stick to the DOS versions.