Pearl Abyss’ recently released action-adventure game, Crimson Desert, appears to feature AI generated art.
During their playthroughs of Crimson Desert, Reddit users Rex_Spy and Due-Perspective9206 spotted in-game art that appears to be AI generated. The art in question includes a series of paintings featured in the game. Interestingly, Valve requires developers to disclose whether generative AI was used in the creation process of titles distributed on Steam. However, no such mention has been made on Crimson Desert’s store page. Read ahead for further details.
Possible AI Generated Art In Crimson Desert
The aforementioned Crimson Desert art suspected to be AI generated can be seen below.
For those Crimson Desert players who would like to inspect the above paintings for themselves, they are located in Oakenshield Manor, in the southwest part of the first city/town. The paintings have several visual inconsistencies that give away the involvement of generative AI in their creation. For example. the white horse at the centre-left of the first painting depicts a leg for a tail and the rider appears fused to it like a centaur.
The apparent inclusion of AI generated artwork in Crimson Desert is a sign that the game went through troubled development. Recently, two anonymous developers who worked on Crimson Desert at Pearl Abyss came forward on Blind, a website only verified industry professionals can access, sharing a critical look at the game’s messy narrative and “off-the-rails” development. Their accounts give the impression of a project plagued by shifting direction, a muddled narrative, and what they describe as a culture of “toxic positivity” that prevented meaningful feedback from surfacing. According to one developer, “the story was not decided until right before release,” which had a cascading effect on the entire project. Another developer corroborated these concerns, describing a corporate structure that discouraged dissent.
Crimson Desert was released on March 19, 2026, for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows PC.
