Activision Once Again Under Fire Over Alleged Generative AI Use, Now for... a Fake Guitar Hero Game?

Activision is once again in trouble with fans over generative AI. Just one week after it admitted to using generative AI in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 for a number of assets, the publisher is now being accused of using generative AI again to promote a different game: Guitar Hero Mobile. But even as audiences criticize the promotion, sharp-eyed fans are discovering that Guitar Hero Mobile may not even be a real game in the first place.

As reported by Insider Gaming, the generative AI in question appears to have been used in an Instagram ad for the newly-announced Guitar Hero Mobile posted two days ago. The ad features four guitar players on a stage in very similar poses with similarly-blobby red guitars, surrounded by distorted speakers that look suspiciously like washing machines and some mass of blobby microphones directly behind them.

In front of them is an audience that includes a number of visible legs that don't seem to belong to anybody, and down the center is a Guitar Hero track with incorrectly colored tracks and blobby, inconsistent notes, some of which don't color match the track they're on. Put together, all of these issues are tell-tale signs of generative AI art, and given Activision's recent track record, it's pretty likely that's what's happening.

In the comments, fans are furious. "Shows how much effort went into this when you can't even get your own game right," reads one response. Another calls the ad "Lazy AI slop," while another reads, "you’d think a giant company like Activision would have some budget for a real graphic designer". A fourth says, "Wow. It appears they're still using midjourney 1.0. I haven't seen AI art this bad since the early days."

But this isn't where the weird generative AI ads end. As a few websites such as Time Extension and 80.lv have pointed out, Activision appears to have quietly dropped a number of generative AI-created ads on Instagram for a smattering of games that haven't otherwise been announced by the company. These include a Call of Duty Zombies mobile game, something called Call of Duty: Sniper, and something else called Crash Bandicoot Brawl. At the time we're writing this, none of these ads are viewable publicly on Activision's official Instagram, but the Guitar Hero Mobile game ad is still available via direct link.

Where this gets even weirder is that fans have managed to find a page for Guitar Hero Mobile on a website called Geeklab, complete with even more AI imagery. Geeklab is a user acquisition and insight company that allows publishers to create "look-alike" store pages for mobile games in order to test user interest. Clicking "GET" on the Guitar Hero Mobile page takes users to a survey that claims "This isn't a real game, but could be some day!" and asks them a number of questions about why they clicked on the ad and how likely they would be to play something like Guitar Hero Mobile.

OFFICIAL: Activision is currently looking into making a new COD Zombies mobile game. The kicker?

They're using AI Generated advertisements in order to garner interest on it.

Full story below:

Recently, an official Call of Duty Instagram ad has been posted a few hours ago… pic.twitter.com/CQeQYiVwFq— COD: Zombies News (@MargwaNetwork) February 28, 2025

What appears to be happening here is that Activision launched some sort of ad campaign to gauge user interest in a number of possible mobile games that don't exist yet. Because those games aren't real, it used generative AI for its advertising art, and confused the heck out of fans who otherwise would have been stoked for an actual Guitar Hero Mobile game.

This comes just one week after Activision admitted to using generative AI in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Said generative AI assets were actually discovered and called out back in December, but it took the publisher nearly three months to admit it had used generative AI in Call of Duty loading screens, calling cards, and other in-game art.

IGN has reached out to Activision for comment.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.