On October 20, the CEO for “AI storytelling” company Nura Studios posted a now-deleted tribute to Amanita Design’s 2009 cult classic Machinarium. I saw a glimpse of the video while it was still live and it was undeniably AI generated, but that probably goes without saying given its provenance.
It wasn’t good, but then: Amanita Design is one of the most visually distinctive studios in the world. The Czech-based team is also among the most assertive, if its response to Nura Studios’ video is anything to go by.
“The audacity to feed Machinarium assets to AI, make AI slop animations, and call it a love letter…,” the studio tweeted of the AI tribute. “Love letters are supposed to be handwritten. This looks disgusting and has nothing to do with us or our craft.”
Ouch. Under these circumstances a studio would normally politely ignore the clumsy advances of a mob like Nura Studios, whose mission is “to empower creators with a human-led AI platform to bring high-quality stories to life”, and whose website looks like this:
So it’s gratifying to see Amanita push back.
Nura Studios CEO Sylvio Drouin did show remorse. “We are so sorry for the post we did,” Drouin tweeted. “We thought it was an homage to your amazing work and I already deleted the posts, again please accept our sincere apologies.”
Amanita Design has yet to publicly accept the apology. Its next game, Machinarium 2, was announced earlier this month.