IGF jurors Sam Barlow, Lena Raine refuse to vote for AI games

The jurors' statement came as this year's IGF entries were described as incredible, but with a significant increase in games developed with generative AI tools. That rise led to fairly intense discussion and disagreement among jurors, with no universal consensus. The statement includes specific beliefs: that generative AI has negative effects, that AI-generated code is not an exception to these harms, and that use of AI tools is not a forgone conclusion in the industry. The jurors also noted that some members voiced concern about being able to safely sign without professional blowback.

Separately, House House, the developer of Big Walk, published a statement saying it sparingly used AI in the final stretch of development to help work through difficult technical challenges and bugs. House House estimated that well under 0.1% of Big Walk's code had anything to do with LLM usage, and said generative AI was not used in any other context when making the game. Its primary use case was to research issues with third-party code via chatbots, including fixing a shadows issue by modifying LLM-suggested code after extensive research and speaking with a Unity engineer.

House House disclosed its AI usage as part of its IGF submission but not on Big Walk's Steam page because the platform does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage. The studio said it had no AI policy in place during development, described that as a failure, and said it will work to have a more comprehensive policy going forwards. It also expressed concern that voluntary disclosures might contribute to the normalization of the technology or its treatment as inevitable, and apologized that its LLM usage may not meet the standards of those trying to limit harm.