World Tour Reveal Tainted By AI Development Disclaimer

Just when all hope seemed lost after it didn't show up during Summer Game Fest, Crazy Taxi: World Tour was revealed during the Xbox Games Showcase. However, fans' excitement quickly turned to doubt and disappointment, as a disclaimer acknowledging AI use during World Tour's development was discovered just minutes after the trailer debuted.

Sega admits that AI was used during the development of Crazy Taxi World Tour

The statement can be found on the Crazy Taxi: World Tour Steam page. Developers must disclose whether AI has been used during the development of a game, according to Steam's guidelines. Some studios try to avoid it and land themselves in hot water when it eventually rumbled, so on the bright side at least Sega is ahead.

That's little consolation for those of us for whom the Crazy Taxi reveal was one of the biggest and best surprises of a week loaded with them. “At SEGA Corporation, we use generative AI as a support tool for developers, with the aim of providing better content to our users and enabling developers to focus more on creative tasks. We have used such generative AI support tools during the development of Crazy Taxi: World Tour. No AI was used with reference to the players in the game,” reads the disclaimer.

Unfortunately, it's the discovery of that statement that has dominated Crazy Taxi's social media chatter in the hours since it was revealed. In an ideal world, all we'd be talking about is how Sega wisely licensed The Offspring's iconic All I Want, which no doubt unleashed an army of 30-somethings as slumbering sleeper agents waking up from a hibernation when those “yah yah yahs” hit on Sunday night.

Sega has responded to the backlash, but not in the way you might have hoped

Sega has issued a statement to Game Informer regarding the use of AI in World Tour amid the backlash, but it's more or less the same statement as the Steam disclaimer that caused all of this. “Generative AI was used to support our teams during the development of background assets for Crazy Taxi: World Tour. Assets generated were still subject to review by the development team. No AI was used with reference to the players in the game,” the statement read.

Sega hasn't been secretive about its AI plans and is using it across multiple studios. Last year, it revealed that it has an internal AI committee, which claims that the industry has reached a point where it is impossible not to use AI during game development. AI use in games is also more widely accepted in Japan and other Asian countries, as a 2025 report claimed that more than half of Japanese studios use generative AI during the development process.