Day two of the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival 2026 kicked off in Anaheim, California, yesterday, following the announcement on April 24 that a new expansion for the MMORPG, titled Evercold, will be dropping in January 2027. While reactions to the upcoming expansion have been positive, the inclusion of AI-generated art during a panel by Square Enix localizer Christopher Koji Fox struck a discordant note that bummed some fans out.
The panel in question, titled “From Tacos to Tenders: Serving up the Lyrics of FFXIV,” has drawn fans’ ire due to Koji Fox’s frequent use of AI-generated images and videos throughout the presentation. I will warn you that the livestreamed segment in question is two hours long, and it’s a bit of a tough watch, as, once Fox starts rolling out the AI-generated slop, the crowd’s lack of enthusiasm is immediately apparent. The crowd, which was mostly laughing, went really quiet.
There are at least two examples (including one that was shown twice) of AI tomfoolery I could spot, including one where Fox used “Copilot-kun” to generate a music video, and another in which he displayed an AI-generated image of the music artists who worked on Final Fantasy XIV’s soundtrack.
Now, to be fair to Koji Fox, he was very upfront about his decision to incorporate AI-generated slop into his presentation. “Due to time constraints, I wasn’t able to get permission to use official photos,” Fox stated during the panel. “And, because our CEO has been keen on incorporating AI tools into our daily work, I decided to create an AI approximation of the famous artist that we’ve worked with on The Primals… and I did this to much success. And by much success, I mean no success.”
That hasn’t stopped some fans online from dragging him for his decision, though. “Koji Fox speedruns the death of his good standing with the community,” commented one user on Bluesky. “He spent at least six months of goodwill by showing us that he used AI at work at least once,” replied another.
That being said, I’m fairly certain that Fox’s decision to use AI in the presentation, paired with his comment about Square Enix “incorporating AI tools into our daily work,” is supposed to be a not-so-subtle jab at the company’s president, Takashi Kiryu. Kiryu has made his stance on AI very clear on several occasions in the past, including the time in 2023 when he stated that Square Enix planned to be “aggressive” in their utilization of AI tech moving forward.
“We also intend to be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions,” Kiryu stated in a letter on New Year’s Day. “In the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts. In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities.”
Maybe I’m just being overly charitable here, but I can’t help but feel like Koji Fox knew that his use of AI-generated videos and images during the panel would be controversial. The whole thing comes off as sort of a protest to me, but perhaps I’m overthinking it.
