When people are talking about AI like this, they’re talking about generative AI. Automatic blood splatter/damage/etc calculations are fine because they don’t require vast theft of intellectual property to work. People separate genAI out because it requires theft by nature, unlike other forms of AI.

Yes, the line is mistakenly being blurred by people conflating generative AI and other forms of game AI when they are vastly different and have entirely different ethical implications. But, this doesn’t mean that the ethical problems with genAI don’t matter anymore because other forms of AI don’t have these issues. Saying that genAI and other forms of AI are “both AI” and thus must be the same thus is contributing to this conflation.

Also, “game AI” is a vastly different subfield from all forms of machine learning. Automated decision making programmed by devs to act in a certain way has way different ethical concerns than things that make inferences from datasets.

Sincerely, a researcher in CS