Roblox Announces New AI-Powered Graphics Overhaul, and Fans Aren’t Happy

Roblox is embracing AI to radically overhaul the look of the game, though some fans aren’t happy with it.

Roblox has been around for 20 years, and has only grown in popularity with age. It is a dominant force of entertainment for younger gamers, especially since players are empowered to create their own games and share them with others. It has often appealed to a younger gamers because of its cartoon-ish art style, but Roblox Corporation is looking to shake things up to make the game feel more photorealistic.

This glow-up comes in the form of a new AI-powered system called Roblox Reality, which will let players change the way the game looks, specifically making it more ‘realistic’. At its core, it seems like a filter rather than something that totally changes the game. Roblox’s simple animations appear to be similar, if not identical. Characters still tend to waddle instead of walk, or have very specific canned animations that don’t vary much.

“Roblox Reality is a hybrid architecture combining our distributed Game Engine’s structured simulation with edge-based Video World Models for supersampling,” said Anupam Singh, Roblox’s Senior Vice President of Engineering, in a new blog post. “This architecture will empower creators of all sizes to author and maintain interactive worlds that blend unprecedented visual fidelity and motion on top of traditional persistence and structure, without increasing development costs.”

Roblox Corporation plans to release Roblox Reality later this year or in early 2027. A video showing the vision for Roblox Reality was released alongside the news, showing side-by-sides of games like Grow a Garden using the AI-powered tech. It should be noted that Singh claims the bottom right footage is a “mock-up”, suggesting this isn’t real gameplay.

https://twitter.com/DavidBaszucki/status/2049532435738837277?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Fans aren’t happy with this news and have taken to various comments sections to express their displeasure. “So the Slop-game engine is now getting an AI slop-filter on top of its slop-games. You went Full Slop. Never go Full Slop,” reads one comment. Another user pointed out that you can see the AI generate a different background at the nine-second mark.

In related news, Garry’s Mod successor S&box was released this week, and fans noticed an influx of AI-generated content from users. It buried actual human-made content from the game’s browser, prompting players to leave negative reviews on the S&box Steam page. Facepunch Studios, the team behind S&box, is working to promote more human-made content and ensure AI-generated content won’t be as prevalent.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN’s news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.