Battlefield 6 fans are starting to suspect that generative AI cosmetics have been added to Battlefield 6, in spite of previous statements by senior EA staff stating that wouldn’t happen.

This controversy stems from a player card sticker included in the Battlefield 6 Windchill Bundle, a package of cosmetics offered this festive season to players of the military FPS. One sticker, called Winter Warning, features an assault rifle with a snowflake background. This assault rifle seems to be quite the futuristic weapon indeed, as it has two barrels attached. Double the fire rate, surely?

This was spotted by user Willcario on Reddit, who titled their post ‘Remove this AI s**t from the store’, writing: “Two barrels on the M4A1, sure. I would literally prefer to have no sticker than some low quality AI generated garbage. You can look at BO7 and see how many favors AI generated rewards won with them”.

This led to a bit of holiday investigation from Battlefield 6 players, who went back through the library of similar cosmetics to try and find additional examples of AI use. There’s no smoking gun here, but some did point to another sticker featuring a bear with ten claws as a possible naughty bit of technological tomfoolery. On one paw the bear has four claws, whereas the other paw has five. A bit of perspective magic at work, or the shadow of Sam Altman casting an evil spell on EA? Who can say.

What’s interesting though is that previous statements by senior staff at EA have outright crossed out the possibility of generative AI assets showing up in Battlefield 6. In an interview with BBC News Night, VP general manager at EA DICE Rebecka Coutaz stated that while generative AI was “very seducing” to use, it would only be used in the proprietary stages of game development to ” allow more time and more space to be creative”. A similar sentiment to Larian’s CEO earlier this month, who also got hit by plenty of backlash.

So is this a case where temporary AI assets slipped in, has there been a change in AI strategy in the months following EA’s move to privatisation, or is this a simple case of artist error. Sometimes I still write in Americanised spelling, so maybe an artist could be on autopilot and draw two barrels on a gun? We don’t know.

EA nor any of the Battlefield Studios have responded to these accusations as of writing.