[STEAM] Sonic fans couldn't wait for Sega's new alternate-reality game – until they spotted the AI training agreement

[Steam 0]

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Well, *****'s gone ahead and ruined Sonic's birthday party in a way only the worst Silicon Valley boyfriend would dare to: the publisher is letting it be an opportunity to train artificial intelligence.

Now the Sonic franchise's 35th anniversary feels a lot more gloomy. People were excited about the apparent alternate-reality game ***** had set up, in which players were meant to "recover" lost Chaos Emeralds during free events in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, and New York. Participating either online or in-person could make you eligible to win prizes like a little enamel pin or a Leblon Delienne sculpture, but it would also require you to consent to being scraped and prodded for the sake of AI.

This fact is only revealed if you attempt to sign up for the Chaos Emeralds hunt on

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and view its Terms of Service before plugging in your zip code, date of birth, and other personal information.

It turns out the Chaos hunt is being carried out "on behalf of ***** via Community," a mass-texting tool that uses AI-generated messages. Giving the service your information means you "consent to our collection, use, and processing of your information [...] for the improvement, development, and training of our artificial intelligence (AI) models and tools."

This will train thier AI :(

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More specifically, Community could use your data to "enhance our proprietary AI models," potentially make your data available to "third party providers," and possibly retain your data "as part of our AI model’s knowledge base,"

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.

None of this sounds like the kind of 35th birthday blowout an anthropomorphic hedgehog like Sonic would want. Actually, *****'s Chaos hunt seems more aligned with Sonic villain Dr. Eggman's values, which generally involve deploying evil robots.

To that point,

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taunts, "Might as well change the main character to Eggman now cause it's clear how much you love bots."

"Ai data harvesting and decade old renders," says

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"What an anniversary.

But AI is sadly part of *****'s new normal. The developer is open about the fact that it thinks generative AI is "an optional support tool for developers," as company spokesperson

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. It also seems to think of generative AI as a wonderful opportunity to kill a mood; *****

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when its

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for the upcoming Crazy Taxi: World Tour revealed it used "generative AI support tools during development."

To its very small credit, though, ***** is at least consistent in its tiptoeing around AI. The studio has been publicly sharing its medium-warm approach to the tech for months now, as company executives made it known in

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that ***** planned to "pursue efficiency improvements, such as leveraging AI," also noting that "we will proceed by carefully assess appropriate use cases, such as streamlining development processes."

***** has seemingly stuck to that approach in using generative AI as a garnish, but not overwhelmingly. Maybe a blue guy who runs as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog could appreciate that kind of technological "streamlining"... but what's certain is that fans who are worried about *****'s ambiguous relationship to AI and buried partnerships with platforms like Community certainly do not.

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.

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