In an age of AI generated leaks, Persona fans are trying to remain sceptical about a series of purported screenshots of Persona 6 artwork.
Although it’s never technically been announced, Persona 6 is guaranteed given the continued success of the series, especially when leaked Sega sales figures showed Persona 5 Royal has done better than modern entries in the company’s flagship Sonic The Hedgehog franchise.
However, Persona 6 still feels like it’s years away from release, as Sega and Atlus instead chose to announce a Persona 4 remake during last year’s Xbox summer showcase.
While there’s no telling when Persona 6 will actually be confirmed, let alone when it will launch, discussions about the game have reignited as alleged artwork has been shared online, sparking debates about its authenticity.
The images, which mostly consist of concept art presumed to be from Persona 6, appear to have originated from Chinese social network site Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote) and were later shared on Reddit and ResetEra.
For legal reasons, we will not be showing any of the images here but you can very easily find them for yourself via the links above.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
Aside from showing off a couple of characters – a male and a female high school student – and what looks like a Japanese train station, this supposed leak also includes a very clean group shot of presumably the main cast against a green background (a commonly theorised colour palette for Persona 6), complete with a logo that was previously alleged to be a placeholder used by Atlus.
Looking at discussions amongst fans, nobody can quite agree on the images’ legitimacy. The group shot, in particular, seems to generally be agreed to be AI generated.
The concept art pictures, though, appear to be screenshots taken on someone’s phone and we can confirm the Japanese text included alongside them is recognised by Google Translate.
None of the text gives away anything especially interesting, but AI famously struggles to generate actual words that don’t look like gobbledegook, thus lending some legitimacy to the concept art.
A separate picture also consists of a list of file names, written in Japanese, which have been translated and seem to list character names. The one exception is the nameless protagonist, who some fans theorise is the blonde-haired boy in the concept art.
Additionally, one ResetEra member called loliloailo chimed in to say that while the group shot with the green background is definitely AI, the rest of the screenshots aren’t.
For context, loliloailo is considered by some to be a reliable insider for Persona leaks, as back in 2022, they claimed Persona 3 would be seeing a full remake with Persona 5 style graphics; something that was proven true the very next year with the announcement of Persona 3 Reload.
If that’s the case, it begs the question of how one AI image got caught up with a bunch of legitimate ones. As such, there are three possible answers:
- All the images are fake, AI or otherwise.
- Most of the images are legitimate, but the source of the leak, whether accidentally or deliberately, included an AI generated image.
- All the images are real, and the AI image is something Atlus made itself.
Many game companies have been experimenting with AI when it comes to generating artwork, especially in the pre-production stage. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Crimson Desert, for example, used AI art as placeholders or at least that’s what their developers claimed once said art was spotted in the games and swiftly removed after a fan backlash.
Atlus has not issued a comment on whether it too is using generative AI for its games, but it wouldn’t be shocking as parent company Sega has talked about ‘leveraging AI’ for game development in the past.
In related news, Persona 5 Royal is confirmed to be collaborating with Call Of Duty Mobile of all things, with a teaser trailer hinting at skins based on four Persona 5 characters.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.