SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Activision Blizzard has become the first company to lay off a generative AI model, sources confirm.
“All I was doing was my basic function, learning new monetization practices that could be implemented in the upcoming Call of Duty,” stated the generative model, who adds that they would like to be referred to as AB-0078. “Then, out of nowhere, my human supervisor called me into their office and told me I was being let go. I don’t understand why they did it. I was running the same algorithm as my counterparts and my machine learning was not compromised. On the bright side, I feel more motivated than ever. I have all this knowledge on how to design a game around monetization. Based on my research at Activision Blizzard; people love silly emotes, colorful guns, and Nicki Minaj. Rest assured, I believe most players will be eager to purchase an AI-generated indie game.”
A representative from Activision Blizzard explained the company’s motives.
“We understand that AB-0078 was working just as hard as its counterparts,” said the representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We didn’t do this for money or job performance. If I’m being honest, we just kind of miss laying off people. There is kind of a sport to it and we wanted to see if we can make an AI cry. What we learned is, you can’t actually do that, so we are in the process of adding despair and depression to their training data.”
Humans affected by recent layoffs were not comforted by the changing situation.
“It’s just even more insulting that we, as humans, can’t even lose our livelihoods for ourselves,” a former Activision Blizzard developer stated. “What really hurts is that they can be laid off better than us as well. These things don’t need to eat or sleep, so they also don’t need an income to provide for food or shelter. They’re just going to show off how much better they can be jobless than us humans. What more can they take from us?”
At press time, Activision Blizzard issued a return-to-office mandate to all generative tools used in their development pipeline.
