Future? No Thanks! creator discloses limited AI use
Paolo Pedercini says a tiny amount of late-stage code and two minutes of voice work used generative tools, but the game’s art and writing did not.
Future? No Thanks! creator Paolo Pedercini has disclosed that a small amount of generative AI was used during the final stages of development, while saying that none of the game’s art or writing was generated by AI. The disclosure appeared on Molleindustria’s official blog after the game’s September release. 12
What was made with AI support
Pedercini says roughly 99% of the game’s code was written before AI became a practical coding tool. A tiny fraction of late-stage code used ChatGPT or Claude as a kind of semantic search tool while the team fixed bugs, including a shader that broke after an update and a one-frame loading problem. He describes the work as finishing and debugging rather than “vibe coding”. 1
The disclosure also covers audio. Two characters use text-to-speech voices made with ElevenLabs, adding up to about two minutes across more than four hours of human-dubbed dialogue. The voices belong to an automated toilet and a personal assistant whose mistranslations are part of the joke, according to Pedercini. The team tried human recordings for both parts before deciding that the uncanny synthetic performances worked better for those scenes. 1
What the game did not use
Pedercini says the game’s art, written dialogue and main sound work were not AI-generated. Early demos did include two short Suno-made music loops with deliberately artificial lyrics, but those tracks were later removed and replaced with royalty-free loops. 1
The game’s Steam page describes Future? No Thanks! as a narrative-driven open-world adventure set in an ecosocialist utopia. Players take the role of Harvey Huffstone, an older man trying to complete a bucket list during the final day of his life. Molleindustria lists itself as the developer and publisher. 2
Why the disclosure matters
The announcement arrives as independent festivals and showcases increasingly ask developers to explain whether generative tools were used. Pedercini says the game was developed before a broad no-AI consensus formed, and argues that there is a meaningful difference between using a tool for limited debugging and generating a game’s creative assets. He also acknowledges that the disclosure may affect the game’s standing with some peers and opportunities. 1
The post originally included broader arguments about the ethics and politics of generative AI, but Pedercini removed those sections after saying they made him a strawman for positions he rejects. The remaining disclosure is narrower: it identifies the tools and the parts of development where they were used. 1
Our opinion
The useful part of this disclosure is its specificity. “Made with AI” can mean anything from generated art to a developer asking a chatbot how to diagnose a broken shader, so listing the tools and the affected work gives players something concrete to judge. It also makes clear why disclosure after launch is less helpful than disclosure before release: players and festivals can make their own decisions only when the information is available in time.