Crash Bandicoot: Brawl and Call of Duty: Zombie Defender are not games that actually exist (yet), but social-media users on platforms such as Instagram are still seeing seemingly AI-generated ads from Activision, the company that owns those franchises.A representative for Activision didn't respond to a request for comment and has not commented publicly about the ads.Several gaming sites have pointed to examples that users have encountered. One, for example, features a new Guitar Hero Mobile game that has not been announced and is not known to even be in development. Users say the ads lead to a marketing survey about whether it's the type of game they'd want to play.Apart from the fictitious nature of the ads or concepts, Activision has drawn criticism for the quality of the art images, which are believed to be AI-generated. The art has drawn comparisons to AI slop-- basically AI imagery or videos that are no better than spam.Activision has recently been caught in the crossfire over another instance of AI usage. Last week, the company confirmed that parts of recent games, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 6,uses AI-generated content.Beginning of a trend?Marc Seal, the founder and CEO of Sortium, an AI video game company, said Activision's actions may be the beginning of a trend in gaming."I haven't seen it done to this extent by others either for an entire float test," Seal told CNET. "It's not common, but I believe it will be."Seal said that a game company's attempt to gauge interest by creating AI-generated content is a type of a bait-and-switch maneuver but fairly harmless."I do think it could be abused," he said. "In the event a studio went so far as to 'pre-sell' a game or content from generated content, I think we would get into dangerous and harmful territory. I can see this happening and then the studio not being able to deliver on the vision or quality the generated content portrayed."Seal added that as long as companies are up front about what they're testing and honest that they're just concepts, this kind of test is fair game."I would rather see studios get early reaction on concepts and bring some new, riskier projects to light that may have been avoided otherwise because there was no clear way to field-test the idea," he said.