'Pretty Awesome, Huh?': Even the Father of Final Fantasy Can't Avoid AI Drama

Final Fantasy 6 fingers

Hironobu Sakaguchi, the legendary game developer most commonly known for the creation of Final Fantasy, has somehow found himself caught in the middle of a debate about AI on social media.

Sakaguchi himself sparked all of this off when he responded to an AI-generated video on X (also known as Twitter). Said video was making some waves amongst Japanese Final Fantasy fans, as it attempts to showcase what a remake of Final Fantasy 6 could look like.

As is so often the case with AI-generated media, the video seems fairly impressive at a glance, but pay any kind of closer attention to it and it's filled with weird errors. Character faces warp and change as they move, clothing details are a mishmash of nondescript patterns, and backgrounds are packed with visual inconsistencies.

And of course, the art direction is generally just all over the place.

But these problems didn't stop Sakaguchi from enjoying the video. He commented: "What is this?! Pretty awesome, huh?".

Needless to say, his positivity has rubbed plenty of people the wrong way, while also encouraging fans of AI-generated media to jump to the technology's defence.

In truth, the replies are an absolute mess, but one response in particular is gaining a lot of traction — and it comes from fellow game developer veteran and SaGa series creator Akitoshi Kawazu.

Kawazu comments: "No, Sakaguchi-san, please stop after the first line", meaning that he doesn't quite agree with Sakaguchi's opinion of the video being "pretty awesome".

I do kind of feel for Sakaguchi here; I seriously doubt that his intention was to cause social media conflict. He probably just saw what he thought was a cool fan-made thing, punched in a quick reply, and then put his phone down.

But this is also a reminder of just how prominent AI-generated content has become. If even Sakaguchi's being sucked into thinking it's cool, then your average internet user won't even think twice about what they're looking at.

How do you feel about all this? Is it really just harmless fun, or are we heading down a very slippery slope? Please prove that you're human in the comments section below.

[source x.com]