Borderlands Studio Head Responds After Fans Rip Him For "AI Slop" Selfie

Randy Pitchford, the co-founder and main boss at Borderlands developer Gearbox, has commented on a recent AI-created photo that he posted on social media and clarified his studio's stance on using AI for game development.

Pitchford said he recently asked ChatGPT to generate a selfie of an AI that indicates "how they feel based on how I interact with it," and it came back with the image you can see below. Pitchford was mocked for this so-called "AI slop," with one person saying a real photo of himself working in his office and taken by a Gearbox employee might have gone over better. Pitchford replied by saying that this person missed the point. Pitchford wanted the AI to create an image of what it perceived to be itself, not Pitchford, as part of the developer's effort to shine a light on the "absurdity of the idea of AI having an identity."

In another post, Pitchford clarified his position further, saying he uses ChatGPT primarily as a search engine. He said he recently tried out the image-generation part of ChatGPT, with his specific prompt for the image being: "Make a picture of yourself as if you worked at my company, Gearbox Software."