"The NHL 26 Deluxe Edition features the Tkachuk hockey family on the cover. The Panthers' Matthew Tkachuk and Senators' Brady Tkachuk appear alongside their father, the legendary power forward Keith Tkachuk, beneath bright lights on a hazy skating rink. What EA hasn't previously disclosed is that it employed generative AI tools to help with the creation of the $100 version's promotional art."
""AI was used to generate stylized mockups during exploration," reads part of one slide from the presentation. It explains that Marr's team used a library of images and expressions for each athlete to train AI on what they looked like. It also used reference imagery from the "present and the past" to train a model to de-age Keith and generate "PRIME Keith.""
The NHL 26 Deluxe Edition cover shows Matthew Tkachuk, Brady Tkachuk, and their father Keith under bright lights on a hazy rink. EA employed generative AI tools, including GPT and Comfy UI, to assist in creating the $100 edition's promotional art. An internal briefing explained that conventional photoshoots were infeasible because Keith has aged and his sons were in the playoffs, so AI was used to de-age Keith and recreate his sons. The process used image libraries, expression datasets, and past-and-present reference imagery to train models, generate a "PRIME Keith," normalize lighting, then apply final Photoshop touchups. The exact share of final AI-generated content remains unclear.
Read at Kotaku
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