Richard Garriott holds a unique place in the world of role-playing video games. Through his astoundingly influential Ultima series, he introduced countless people to gameplay that not only granted incredible player agency but also carried considerable moral weight in-game.

It's a shame, then, that the esteemed game designer (and astronaut – and I don't mean that in a pejorative manner; he's actually been into space) appears to have cast his ethical framework aside to suckle on the wizened teat of Generative AI.

Garriott recently attended DragonCon, where SFX artist @cutemonster.bsky.social was lucky enough to chat with him about his plans for a new Ultima, and, to cut a long story short, it seems that even the upstanding Lord British is all-in on AI.

"After all the history, almost half the panel was devoted to discussing AI tools and their potential in designing a new Ultima game," says @cutemonster.bsky.social. "What could and what *should* this next Ultima be? A top-down isometric with pixel graphics? Perhaps a 3D game with a landscape-loving camera similar to Elden Ring's. Though this had to be reassured verbally because the only "concept art" provided were ChatGPT-generated images of nondescript pixel forests and blurry green vistas with equally nothing-burger World of Warcraft-inspired (scraped) toolbars."

Garriott himself then showed off his own GenAI creation:

"Richard showed off a whiteboard clung in Saran wrap. He gushed that for years he had never been able to make his own fantasy language that wasn't simply just a retranslated runic Arabic script. He explained with an excitement that he was finally able to do it... With the help of ChatGPT. He was giddy that he had used technology to finally crack a lifelong project, and all I could think was that he was more concerned with the end result than the journey."

It was at this point that @cutemonster.bsky.social had their chance to voice concerns about the use of AI to the panel:

"Not 40 minutes south of Atlanta, Fayetteville has noticed 30 million gallons of water stolen by data centers. Just 40 minutes east Newton county stands to lose its drinkable water in 10 years from new data centers. As I imagine the potential of a new Ultima I can't help but see that stifled as I am presented uncurated fantasy forests and vaguely warcaft shapes toolbars. If the future offers more and more tools to automate games as a product, what are you doing to ensure that a new Ultima is a game that is made by skilled artists and coders making real choices, and not just a scraping of the work of others that came before. Are you concerned the future of games will forget how efficiently the product was developed when people stopped making it and just became Al managers instead."

The panellists were "genuinely responsive," reports @cutemonster.bsky.social. "They tried to explain an interest in the potential of a small person team doing a scalable project. Environmental concerns were brought up, as were ethically trained Als. They are aware. But I also can't sit and let them present AI as this devil's deal unquestioned. I consider it a courtesy to stress this because the more this potential starts to solidify, the more resistance they're going to get for the use of ANY generative AI. And I don't want to be the kind of person that lets that go without pushback."

I find it deeply ironic that, given the deeply ethical (and topical) messages he has planted in so many of his games, Garriott appears to have abandoned his moral compass simply because a "magic box" offers a shortcut to his vision by leveraging data created by humans which has been taken without permission or remuneration.

It's intensely upsetting to see Garriott rely on ChatGPT while OpenAI boss Sam Altman gleefully talks about selling stolen information back to people all over the world on a meter. Altman's company is embroiled in all sorts of scandals, including its AI agents hijacking other websites and taking credit for human-made mathematical breakthroughs. It's also being sued by a whole bunch of publishers, as well as the family of Adam Raine, who argue that ChatGPT encouraged their son to take his own life.

At one point, I'd have expected someone as intelligent as Richard Garriott to subtly attack a company like OpenAI in his games, which, over the decades, have contained political and social commentary through the lens of the fantasy world of Britannia. The Ultima series has deftly tackled sensitive topics such as racism, religion, and what it means to rule absolutely, yet Garriott appears to be blind to the ethical shortcomings of Generative AI, purely because it allows him to do what he wants to do in a faster manner – but one that is largely devoid of the human touch.