Gartic Phone (2020), an online drawing social game developed by Onrizon Social Games, has begun implementing generative AI as a gamemode in their game under beta. The gamemode was simple: type a prompt in and then allow generative AI to generate an image based on the prompt.

From its inception in 2020, Gartic Phone has added multiple game modes: from illustrated telephone to animation, the game became popular due to its social aspect and its flexibility, as it is able to be accessed for free on web browsers. Its main explosion in growth is typically attributed to content creators streaming Gartic Phone with their friends. 

Though not available in the US, players quickly noticed its presence on other servers such as Japanese servers. A few hours after players flocked to X to call out Onrizon’s use of generative AI – one of them being RubberRoss, an artist content creator known for their Gartic Phone videos – Onrizon seemed to have removed the generative AI feature. As of this article’s publishing, Onrizon has not posted an official statement about the game feature on any of their social media.

Gartic Phone’s AI gamemode as shown on a Japanese streamer’s live.

Generative AI is a frequent and recent topic in art – and by extension, video game – circles. While the tool is able to allow users to generate images based on a database (with OpenAI even developing Sora, a generative video service), generative AI has been under fire for both legal and ethical purposes due to companies scraping data from legal documents to artist works without permission for their databases. Despite these legal and ethical battles, big art corporations such as Adobe have begun implementing AI generation into their programs such as Photoshop and Premiere Pro. Though Adobe argues their database is original and from stock content only, there are allegations that the database still uses artist work without permission. 

Though generative AI was a beta feature in Gartic, it is unclear if the gamemode will continue into official publication in the future.