Neverness to Everness, the supernatural open-world RPG from Hotta Studio and Perfect World, launched on April 29, 2026, with a public stance on generative AI: it is used for early mood and reference work, but not for finished character art or core assets. Within a day of release, players began questioning whether that line was actually held.
What Hotta Studio said about AI in NTE
In a pre-launch interview, NTE executive director Yang Lei described the studio's AI use as a previsualization tool. The team runs atmosphere renderings through AI to test whether a scene matches the feeling they want before committing to it as reference material.
Yang drew a hard line on output: core assets and character portraits would not be made with AI. That framing is the policy players are now measuring the game against.
The Weathering With You billboard accusation
A day after launch, side-by-side images circulated on X comparing an in-game billboard in Hethereau to a shot from the Makoto Shinkai film Weathering With You. The composition, lighting, and subject placement are nearly identical, with the in-game version appearing to have been processed through an AI filter rather than redrawn.
The original post passed 1.5 million views and 21,000 likes within hours. Reactions split between two readings: an intentional homage to the film, or human-made artwork run through an image-to-image model and dropped onto a billboard asset. Critics argued that even as an Easter egg, feeding someone else's animation cel into AI undermines the studio's own stated policy.
Where AI appears to be used in the game
Beyond the Weathering With You billboard, community discussion has pointed to a second category: ambient set dressing. Posters, signage, and background imagery inside Hethereau's shops and streets are where most "looks AI" callouts have landed. Character art, by contrast, has not drawn the same accusations so far.
| Area | AI involvement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Character portraits and core assets | Stated as off-limits by the director | No credible accusations to date |
| Atmosphere and mood references | Confirmed by the director as part of the workflow | Acknowledged use |
| In-world signage and billboards | Unconfirmed, flagged by players | Under public scrutiny |
| Weathering With You billboard | Alleged image-to-image AI processing of an existing film frame | Disputed, no studio response confirmed |
How to tell what's actually disputed
Two things are getting blended together in the conversation, and they are not the same claim.
The first is whether NTE uses AI at all. That is settled: the studio openly says it does, in a narrow preproduction role. The second is whether shipped, visible art in the live game was produced or finished with AI in violation of that policy. That is the open question, and the Weathering With You billboard is the strongest specific example players have surfaced.
Not to be confused with NTE.AI
Search results for "NTE AI" also surface NTE.AI, a document management app from TabTree Software Solutions on the Google Play Store and App Store. That product is unrelated to the gacha game. It uses AI for document capture, indexing, and categorization in a business context, and has no connection to Hotta Studio or Perfect World.
What this means for players right now
If your concern is character art, gacha portraits, and signature illustrations, the studio's stated policy is that those are made without generative AI, and the post-launch complaints have not contradicted that specific claim. If your concern is broader, including environmental art, billboards, and background imagery, the policy is looser by the studio's own admission, and at least one prominent in-game asset is being publicly contested.
No formal response from Hotta Studio addressing the Weathering With You comparison has been confirmed. Until there is one, the practical read is simple: AI is part of NTE's pipeline in a limited capacity, the studio has acknowledged, and whether that capacity has quietly expanded into shipped art is the question the community is now pressing.