When Saber revealed Rideshare "Stimulator", Oisin was guardedly interested in the unofficial Uber simulator. You play a taxi operator picking up and dropping passengers around town while listening to their stimulating conversation. You thought the name referred to a different kind of stimulation? Get your head out of the gutter.

Though, maybe not too far out of the gutter. After all, since its reveal, Rideshare's gained more attention for its odd swipes at Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford and that time he left a USB stick at a Medieval Times restaurant which contained sensitive business documents and videos he described as "barely legal porn". Saber CEO Matt Karch told Gamefile “The dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4. Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.”

However, now Rideshare is coming under even greater scrutiny because the game's former lead writer, Stella Sacco, said on Bluesky that "Saber replaced me with ChatGPT midway through development". And, while Saber denies her account, they have admitted the game features generative AI. Use they've not disclosed on the game's Steam listing, contravening Valve's AI policy.

Writing on Bluesky, Sacco said that "I was lead writer on this one! And Saber replaced me with ChatGPT midway through development. All the passenger voices were AI too. Either they changed direction at some point or they’re not disclosing it on Steam."

When Oisin put the question to Saber, they sent us a statement denying Sacco's claims, saying "Neither Saber nor Unigine have replaced any writers with AI for Rideshare or any other game. In fact, Saber's staff of writers has tripled since 2023. Rideshare's story was written entirely by real people. The game will also feature an experimental, free-ride mode that by necessity incorporates AI as the number of passengers in the game is infinite. We are firm believers in using AI tools to improve or enhance gameplay experiences and improve NPC behavior as we have done since Saber was founded in 2001. As the industry has continued to contract, Saber continues to hire. None of our 3000+ employees have to worry about being replaced by AI."

Answering a follow up question about free-ride mode that allows for infinite passengers, Saber said “AI in the case of passengers means that every passenger the driver picks up is a random NPC. Their behavior from an animation standpoint is rather simple as they are merely passengers. However we wanted to give the passengers a limitless number of things that they could say. The only way to accomplish this is through the use of LLMs and voice generation. We think this makes the game less predictable and more fun. It's an example where AI can help create experiences that we could otherwise never pull off. The alternate would be simply to eliminate the free ride mode or to have passengers ultimately repeat themselves. We are going to share more details on the implementation as we lead up to a firm release date.”

I'm not sure what distinction Saber were hoping to achieve by saying that "Rideshare's story was written entirely by real people" while also admitting that dialogue and voice acting are generated by AI. Perhaps they mean that the main campaign is wholly human written and voice acted, but AI-generated free-ride mode surely has replaced human writers and voice actors with generative tools.

Whatever the case, it appears Saber haven't followed Valve's AI disclosure policy. There is no mention of this free-ride mode on Rideshare's Steam page, nor a disclosure of generative AI's use within the game. In their AI Disclosure policy, Valve say developers must declare this kind of use of generative AI when submitting their games for placement in the Steam Store. They also say a developer must provide details on "what kind of guardrails you're putting on your AI to ensure it's not generating illegal content."

Presumably these are the sorts of guard rails that might stop an AI character from talking about a porn-filled USB stick being left at a medieval-themed restaurant.

Lack of AI disclosure is becoming a growing problem. Just this week, Edwin had to update his post on Carcass, as the developer had declared AI use on the game's demo page, but not the main store page. And Mark's been reporting on the complexity and competing positions on AI use and disclosure in the modding scene.

Yes, these tools are becoming more widespread and how people feel about their use differs, but disclosure is the bare minimum of what a developer needs to do. Yet small indies up to big publishers are simply choosing not to.

From a reporting point of view, we may need to start assuming all Saber games feature AI writing and voice acting. I've an interview with one of the company's head honchos in a few weeks and I suspect this will come up.

Who knows, between now and then, perhaps there'll be another scandal I can them about – maybe the game features a mission in which you keep the Elgin Marbles out of reach of Greek authorities.