League of Legends: Wild Rift executive producer David Xu has said Riot “can and will do better,” after sharing an anniversary video to the game’s account on Chinese social media site Weibo that very much looks to be AI slop.
However, Xu hasn’t confirmed that the video did use AI in this sort-of-apology, instead claiming this was a “creator-made” video that’d found its way onto the League of Legends‘ spin-off’s official channels.
The video, since taken down from Weibo (but preserved for prosperity via Reddit and Twitter reposts from bemused fans), depicts a big concert in celebration of Wild Rift’s third anniversary. Or, as the text in the video spells it “aniversary,” with the R in “3rd” looking very janky to boot. Several of your faves, including Jinx, Seraphine, and Yasuo, are doing their best to entertain a crowd who at several points look terrifyingly rubber-faced.
While I can’t make out any six-fingered hands, there are plenty of visual glitches that you’d expect from generative AI, from misbehaving tails to shapeshifting handguns that can’t quite decide if they’re firing bullets or lasers. Also, this might just be a mistranslation, given this vid appeared on Chinese socials, but one of the song’s main lyrics being ‘Can we turn up the blower higher’ is sending me because it sounds like a Northern teenager gently moaning that they want the air con in their mum’s car cranked up.
Wild rift china version got backlash.
byu/Winter_underdog inwildrift
Cue lots of miffed fans, and Xu’s response. “Yesterday we posted a creator-made video on our official Weibo channel that, frankly, did not hit the mark,” he wrote. “When we post content on our official channels, it’s on us to maintain a high quality bar and be clear about where it came from. Thank you for all the feedback, we can and will do better.”
So, allegedly it’s all third-party content that shouldn’t have gone up on main, but there’s been no direct acknowledgement of the AIlephant in the room – or whether Riot might put out more stuff like this in the future. Xu also neglects to mention the video’s apparent point of origin, which looks to be an AI production company called ‘异类Outliers’, whose BiliBili page includes the Wild Rift anniversary video and a section header that machine translates as “Collection: Alien uses AI to introduce you to 100 aesthetic styles”.
Thanks, Mr Alien, but I’m good.
