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If you've kept even a casual eye on the world of Star Fox modding, then you'll be familiar with the names Sunlit and KandoWontu.
The pair worked together on Star Fox EX, a fan-made upgrade for the original SNES game which expanded it in all kinds of interesting ways.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll see the pair collaborate on any future projects, as Sunlit issued a statement on social media ending their association with KandoWontu.
"I very strongly disapprove of Kando's current project," says Sunlit, referencing a recent project to port the game natively to PC using AI tools.
Sunlit continues:
"At first I tolerated his descent into madness with Al use, but using it to rush out a PC 'port' of Star Fox, much of it already based upon my own work, and then feeding to it the entirety of Star Fox EX, which was made out of passion by a team of humans, is going too far. I am no longer comfortable associating with someone who clearly has lost sight of the fact that the reason why we work on these projects and do what we do is not for the final product itself, but the journey we take to get there."
The developer quickly points out that they are not completely against AI, however. "I must admit that I do use Al tools to assist me in my work, using them to write tools and scripts for me and to help me learn and understand things I am unfamiliar with, alongside all the other usual resources we are afforded these days."
For Sunlit, though, there is a limit to how much AI assistance they feel is acceptable. "I never have or ever will use AI tools directly in the programming of the actual game or project itself, only in a strictly assistive capacity. The final product you receive from me will have been programmed and designed by humans. Everyone has their opinions on what acceptable Al use is and isn't, this is mine. To put it simply, It is an assistant. You have it assist you, not do everything for you."
Sunlit adds:
"By abusing these Al tools to rush straight to the finish line, what do you gain? Where is the accomplishment? You may gain the product, but you don't really gain any meaningful experience or knowledge from it. If anything, you've wasted a few hundred dollars and ended up with a black box of a codebase you don't understand in the slightest, only for the product itself to be mediocre in quality.
It saddens me to see Kando going down this path, knowing who he once was. I have seen this happen more and more in recent times as these tools become more popular, and it greatly disturbs me to see people be so willing to hand over their ability to think and create, the very things which make us human, entirely to a cold, unfeeling machine. The work of the machine will never match that done by humans who care and actually know what they're doing.
I wish Kando well in whatever he decides to do in the future, but I will not be following him."