1666: Amsterdam Devs Apologize for AI Assets in Demo

Players took less than four days to spot AI-generated portrait paintings in the free prologue demo of 1666: Amsterdam — the long-awaited project from Assassin's Creed creator Patrice Désilets — and his studio Panache Digital apologized on June 9. The official line is that "early versions of assets" accidentally slipped into the Summer Game Fest build, and the Early Access and full release "will not include any assets generated by AI." Players also flagged the cover art and marketing materials, which stretches the placeholder excuse considerably. This is now the standard industry script: ship AI assets, get caught within days, blame the pipeline, promise it's gone. The real lesson for studios is that 2026 players are functionally a distributed AI-detection network with a grudge, and they will find it. For a game trading on Désilets' auteur reputation, "we forgot to remove the AI paintings" is a uniquely bad look.