Last week was filled with a ton of gaming news thanks to Nintendo’s September Direct, but despite having a presence during Nintendo’s show, Japanese studio Level-5 held its own presentation stream. Among the games featured were a remake of Yo-Kai Watch 2 and a remake of Professor Layton and the Curious Village. That should be an exciting moment for fans of either series, but watchers were quick to note what looked like AI artifacts across the entire event. Turns out they weren’t wrong, as Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino confirmed the company used generative AI to make its games look “spectacular.”
In a post on Twitter, Hino wrote, “Since we used AI for the video footage during this event, some concerns have been raised regarding the content of the work, so I would like to offer an explanation. Our sole desire was to make the presentation spectacular, so we incorporated processing that also served as an experiment using the latest AI. I sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this.” He then went on to explain that all aspects of its games were “created by human hands,” such as scenarios, character designs, and basic settings. He assures fans that “no hastily generated AI data” will feature in its upcoming games.
1日違いの公式トレーラーですら顔が変わる品質で「AI使って効率化してるんです！」とか笑えるな
効率化した結果がこれかよ pic.twitter.com/3xWeg8M08J
— サラ-K-ジール(二代目) (@Sara_Return) September 12, 2026
Still, that doesn’t ring true to past comments made by the company. In late 2023, Level-5 gave a rather extensive presentation on how it will be incorporating generative AI into its development pipeline. Then in 2025, Hino made the claim that “80-90%” of games were being made by AI, so the company had to go all in on the technology. Maybe Hino has finally had a change of heart, but seeing as how everything revealed during the company’s recent digital showcase would have been started with the tech, there’s no possible way to confirm AI isn’t stuck in there somewhere.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
