Activision Admits Call of Duty Contains AI Content

Although in-game stores allowing microtransactions are considered a curse in video games, several publishers are heavily into this practice, particularly for free-to-play games. Revenue from high-end titles and microtransactions within the Call of Duty series totals billions of dollars per year. A full-priced AAA game is overflowing with microtransactions for cosmetics, event passes, and battle passes.

Activision chose to stay quiet on the subject of generative AI in Call of Duty despite mounting player criticism. However, following months of speculation, Activision and the Call of Duty developers officially stated that both Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone include AI-generated content.

COD players identified a loading screen during the Season 1 "Merry Mayhem" event in Black Ops 6 that included an AI-generated character—a zombie Santa with six fingers. According to an investigation published in 2024 by WIRED, the article claims that Activision Blizzard started using AI technologies in their game development as far back as 2023.

Activision made a public announcement about their relationship with Modulate, an AI-powered conversation moderating platform, with the release of Modern Warfare 3 in 2023. Additionally, the publisher has verified that Black Ops 6 has had AI conversation moderation from the very beginning. This confirmation has caused quite a stir since, not so long ago, Activision deployed RICOCHET Anti-Cheat AI for Black Ops 6.

However, Activision allegedly included their first AI-generated cosmetics in Modern Warfare 3's in-game store before the end of that year, so by then, they said, the situation had changed. Further analysis revealed that AI was also used to create additional in-game visual elements like loading screens, weapon stickers, and player cards. These may have been either given out as prizes or sold in bundles in the game's in-game store.

In-game offers weren't the only place you might get AI-generated entertainment. Both Infinity Ward and Treyarch's Christmas social media postings included generative AI. Activision, like many other publishers and studios, was actively seeking candidates with experience in generative AI, according to employment ads.

In January, Steam revised its policy to permit AI-generated content, which seemed like a direct reversal of Steam's previous stance on AI-generated content in video games. With Activision's use of generative AI content, Steam may face more complications, even if the platform has decided to let AI-generated games with a policy warning.

Again, in January 2025, a policy paper from the US Copyright Office stated that copyright cannot be applied to AI-generated content, even when such content complements human innovation. Employing generative AI to generate WIPs is not affected by copyright protection policies. Activision may theoretically employ generative AI to design possible in-game cosmetics, but copyright protection would require a human to reproduce or complete the design.

Those restrictions may not apply, meanwhile, to in-game loading screens and weapon stickers that use raw-generated AI graphics that have not been cleaned up by a human developer. Even the instructions used to create AI-generated text and graphics do not have copyright protection.

Activision is unlikely to rethink its use of generative AI techniques, even if they have faced criticism from players. Microsoft axed 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox jobs while continuing to invest a lot of money in artificial intelligence, and Activision is just one of their many divisions. Recently, Xbox introduced Muse, a creative AI tool that the company says will help with game preservation.

Although it is still unknown how much AI-generated content is in Black Ops 6, it has been confirmed that there is AI content in the game. However, both developers and gamers have spoken up against the technology. At least for the time being, it seems that their complaints are going unheard, as big tech companies keep touting AI as the game industry's future.