Palworld developers suspected of copying Pokémon using AI

The new Palworld game from Japanese studio Pocketpair, released last week, has faced accusations of copying character designs from the popular Pokémon game series.

Here's What We Know

Many users on social media have openly accused Pocketpair of plagiarism, analysing Palworld's pokémon and "buddies" with famous pokémon.

since I'm bored as hell, I'm gonna be making a thread of this i think.... Palworld design analysis trying to spot every pokemon they jumbled together pic.twitter.com/Ch9jcx5hCI

- onion_mu (@onion_mu) January 18, 2024

Also discussed is the possibility that the developers used generative AI tools to create new designs based on existing ones. Previously, Pocketpair Studios released AI: Art Imposter, a game in which an AI image generator was part of the gameplay.

here's the CEO of Pocketpair talking about using AI to bypass copyright, generating fakemons with it, calling AI: Art Imposter a real-time image generation game, and being excited for games powered by GPT-4 pic.twitter.com/79xwZr0yEI

— Zaytri ???? (@imZaytri) January 19, 2024

Additionally, in past posts, studio CEO Takuro Mizobe has spoken favourably about the potential of such tools for content creation. According to him, Palworld's character concepts were mostly worked on by a single aspiring artist, which also reinforced the community's suspicions.

Moreover, on Sunday, an anonymous account appeared on social network X claiming to have evidence of direct copying of game assets from other games.

Mizobe published a response without denying Pokémon's influence on Palworld's design. However, he rejected accusations of plagiarism and condemned insults against the game's artists.

Go Deeper:

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• The January phenomenon is not going to stop: Palworld sold 6 million copies in 4 days
• Palworld continues to surprise: the hit shooter has overtaken Counter-Strike 2 in peak online play
• Pocketpair publishes Palworld roadmap: new raid bosses, cross-play, and a bunch of fixes

Source: VGC