Sega has seemingly updated the wording of Crazy Taxi: World Tour’s AI generated content disclosure on Steam. The change, which appears to have been made some time between late July and early August (according to Wayback Machine), has been garnering attention on social media recently. While the disclosure previously read:
“At SEGA Corporation, we utilize generative AI as a support tool for developers, aiming to provide better content to our users and enable developers to focus more on creative tasks.
We have used such generative AI support tools during development of Crazy Taxi: World Tour. No AI was used in reference to the performers in the game.”
The latter part is now worded somewhat more specifically:
“In Crazy Taxi: World Tour, generative AI was used as part of the ideation process for background objects. However, no AI-generated content will be included in the final game.”
Back when Crazy Taxi: World Tour’s store page first went live, the mention of generative AI quickly became a source of controversy among fans of the racing franchise. At the time, a Sega spokesperson told Game Informer that generative AI was used to support the team during the development of Crazy Taxi: World Tour’s background assets, with generated assets “still being subject to review by the development team.” However, at Summer Game Fest, Crazy Taxi series creator Kenji Kanno further clarified that the team was using AI only “as reference,” i.e. to generate ideas based on which actual assets would be made by human creators (source: Kotaku).
The updated Steam store page disclosure seems to reflect Kano’s explanation, as generative AI is described as only being part of the “ideation process.” While it’s reassuring that the developers now guarantee there will be no AI-generated assets actually appearing in the game in a legally binding way, part of the community still has qualms about the technology being used in the first place.
Crazy Taxi: World Tour is scheduled to release in 2027 for PC (Steam), PS5, Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X❘S.
