Machinarium AI tribute cops a flogging from studio: 'This looks disgusting and has nothing to do with us or our craft'

Nura Studios, an "AI storytelling" company, posted a now-deleted AI-generated "tribute" to Amanita Design's 2009 game, Machinarium. Amanita Design, known for its distinctive visual style, responded sharply to the AI video, tweeting, "The audacity to feed Machinarium assets to AI, make AI slop animations, and call it a love letter… This looks disgusting and has nothing to do with us or our craft." Normally, studios might ignore such advances, but Amanita Design's public pushback highlights a growing tension surrounding AI-generated content. Nura Studios CEO Sylvio Drouin later apologized, stating they believed it was an homage, and deleted the posts. Amanita Design, which recently announced Machinarium 2, has not yet publicly accepted the apology, underscoring the ongoing debate about the ethics and quality of AI-generated art and its relationship to original creative work.