The discovery of AI art in Black Ops 7 is forcing a broader discussion of the issues, and some very dumb responses
As we reported earlier, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 may be getting decent reviews from critics, it’s being absolutely slammed by players over its use of AI. The scale of the reaction to Activision’s implementation of shitty AI art has been so great, in fact, that it’s caught the attention of Democratic congressman Ro Khanna, who is now calling for regulation of the gaming industry over the issue.
Black Ops 7‘s heavy use of AI has shocked players given the game has come from one of the richest corporations on Earth, in a title that will have cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Paying its artists for a handful of drawings seems unlikely to have made a significant dent, and just feels wanton and gross. This caught the attention of congressman Ro Khanna, who took to X in response to a post by popular gaming account @Pirat_Nation. Quoting it, Khanna declared that “we need regulations that prevent companies from using AI to eliminate jobs to extract greater profits.”
“Artists at these companies need to have a say in how AI is deployed,” the politician continued. “They should share in the profits. And there should be a tax on mass displacement.”
We need regulations that prevent companies from using AI to eliminate jobs to extract greater profits.
Artists at these companies need to have a say in how AI is deployed.
They should share in the profits. And there should be a tax on mass displacement. https://t.co/uU2tmt8pDJ
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) November 14, 2025
It’s probably fair to say that these aren’t the most well-thought-through arguments, given just how impossible it would be to regulate in this way—it doesn’t seem feasible for government to rule on how companies must listen to a specific skillset within their workforce, for instance. And it rather misses that AI art is the AI use we can easily spot as outsiders, failing to recognize the vast number of different creative roles within a games developer where sloppy AI can be used to replace human endeavor. But either way, the call for AI regulation is certainly very welcome, and it’s a conversation we want our governments to be having.
And a conversation Khanna certainly had, with super-rich businessman David Friedberg (a man who founded The Climate Corporation and then sold it to one of the most despicable corporations on the planet, Monsanto, for $1.1bn). Friedberg replied to Khanna’s post with the impeccable argument, “What if the AI creates/enables/unlocks new higher-paying jobs?” Yeah! What if it does the exact opposite of what it’s actually currently doing? Eh?! Incredibly, he then goes on to evidence this by using the example of tractors in farming. Without them, “we’d have very expensive food, no industry revolution, and a shitty standard of living for workers.” Yes, if there’s one example you want to reach for when celebrating the role of technology in improving people’s working conditions, it’s farm laborers. Fucking hell.
Friedberg is currently running Ohalo, a company claiming it can genetically engineer crops to use few resources for more gain, or as the company puts it, “accelerating evolution to unlock nature’s potential.” Which is definitely the phrase you would put on the website of the company that causes the apocalypse in a movie. It’s also a way of applying patents to seeds, making food growth even more difficult for developing nations.
In case you think the farm workers quote is an unfair line to pluck from his lengthy reply, Friedberg also unironically wrote, “in every truly free society, tech evolution has improved the lives of absolutely everyone.” I dunno, perhaps he’s being archly satirical with “every truly free society” given none has ever existed? It seems sadly unlikely, though. Because he then rather shows his hand by saying, “your view is luddite at best and authoritarian at its heart.” The Luddites, of course, were a group that destroyed textile machines not because they were anti-technology, but because they were fighting for their livelihoods and their need to be able to feed their families, protesting for regulation and worker rights. And, you know, it was the authorities who enlisted the army to murder these people to prevent a wider uprising. My ironometer just started popping out cogs and springs.
As the discussion continues, Khanna attempts to find a typically wet and insipid centrist route through the issue (this is, after all, the man who is currently trying to convince Democrats to work with Marjorie Taylor-Greene because that dangerous conspiracist just happens to align on the Epstein files issue), but only meets Friedberg’s sci-fi-riddled fantasies of an impossibly wonderful future which he then attempts to use to justify absolutely anything today. It really is spellbinding to read a rationalization of replacing paid workers with AI today because tomorrow a person opening a bike shop could buy two bike-making robots and an AI-created website. I swear to god that’s not a pastiche of his words—click the link. (Or don’t, if you don’t want to be confronted by a truly disgusting rant about how feeding the hungry raises food costs, and access to education, um, increases the cost of education. Just shit.)
© Activision / Kume / Kotaku
No matter the poverty of the argument above, it remains the case that some form of regulatory intervention would clearly be positive for workers. Incentives to pay humans to create, rather than algorithms to plagiarize, seems like a net good. But then net goods appear to now be only recognizable as “socialism,” and it all feels like an impossible dream given our current situation of being led by a despotic manbaby who is deeply enamored by the attention from the billionaires inflating the AI bubble.
Yet, having the discussion remains vital. The AI bubble is going to burst, and it’s going to be hilarious for a moment, but then only cost more people more jobs as countless billions are wiped out of the economy. In the meantime, the more we can stand up against replacing human creativity with embarrassing, crappy, six-fingered dross, the better it will be for those in creative industries. If the use of AI causes a massive public stink, as is happening with Black Slops 7, it holds back the tide and causes c-suite enthusiasts to hesitate over potential bad press.
It does feel enormously demoralizing to need to suggest that it might be good to pay your employees to create splendid art, rather than embarrass yourself by including half-assed machine effluence, and yet here we are. So all power to politicians willing to speak up and force the discussion into the wider public. And when you see those most vociferously defending the use of LLMs and art-regurgitation machines, it’s always worth looking into how it financially benefits them before taking on board their arguments.
