I cannot in good faith take the full quote to mean anything but "We want our development expectations to increase, without increasing development time/cost. So we'll let our team decide between crunch, or using AI to speed things up."

Yeah, I couldn't stand Aang and Katara and them. I much preferred when Avatar 3 focused on Sam and Dean Winchester instead. I just wish we'd have seen more of their adventures in Hel- err, I mean, the Fire Nation.

I don't think anyone wants the goal of pushing AI out of all our art and tech and whatnot, to become a means for brand loyalists to gatekeep communities or win 'console war' type battles based on anti-AI paranoia.

I hope so. I'm sure their bet is that AI will be proficient enough that in a year or two, that it'll become exceedingly difficult to know what is/isn't using AI.

At that point if they've stop referencing AI aloud, it'll create infighting and baseless targeted attacks around whose hands are red.

But is anything changing, or are they just shutting up about it in the marketing and Intel is still on the same track, just in the background where the heat will die down?

The last thing I want is for everyone to quietly NOT say they'll stop with AI, and just stop telling us about it.

Like, Dell laptop commercials for at least half a year now have said the laptops come "...with Intel AI inside...". Now they just say "...with Intel inside...". They backed out of marketing the AI, presumably because it's so disliked. Coolarooney.

In my heart I agree with this, and that's why I'm gonna continue to treat it as if it can be fought against and genuinely won

That being said, I can't help but to be cynical about the small (seeming) victories.

I love the game, but I'm glad people have finally started being willing to admit that the last third of it is almost exclusively a mess.