Palworld has long since taken over the world. The staggering number of 2 million simultaneous connections has now settled down to a modest average of 30,000. By any measure, it is a continuing success.

Still, part of the initial uproar included anger at fellow Palworlders. To hear our friends tell it, they were either direct Pokémon parrots or AI-generated shoddy products. But as I noted in January, most of these were based on mere mood and the fact that Pocket Pair CEO Takuro Mizobe was really excited about AI Pokémon in 2021 (to be fair, this is highly doubtful, but raised eyebrows are not proof).

But, as you may have noticed, it is now 2024, and Mizobe seems to have a more dim attitude toward technology in general, as suggested by a recent tweet (translated and found by Automaton).

"Palworld is often accused of using generative AI, but we don't actually use it. Our artists draw thousands of sketches. (This feature) is part of our pal creation process, so anyone interested should take a look!"

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As if to say, "Look, we're drawing concept art, promise!" as if to point to it. Mizobe also shared a link to a fragment from the latest issue of CGWORLD magazine that describes the development of the pals in the base game. In it, he shared several ongoing sketches, as follows.

Ah, fair play. Definitely concept art.

It was my opinion that while it certainly matters whether Palworld uses AI or not (much like verifying whether your buddies stole the Mona Lisa), there's not much way to prove it. Especially for me, who loved to critique even before I contributed to PC Gamer, the question "Was this made by an AI?

In other words, sometimes the curtains are just blue, and sometimes a human concept artist just looked at Mega Mewtwo Y and said, "Yeah, it would work with a few changes." All art is secondary, sometimes very secondary. But muddying the pool based on intuition only makes it harder to see the really poor use of the technique. At least Palworld never told me to drink my own pee.