When screenshots from Mario Kart World began circulating online – complete with strange visual artefacts like warped billboards, broken kerning, and odd texture choices – many assumed the same thing: this must be AI-generated.
Commenters called it out within hours. Accusations flew across social media. Generative AI, they said, had crept into Nintendo’s workflow. And while that assumption proved false (Nintendo publicly denied using any AI-generated imagery), the controversy didn’t fade quickly.
