Activision has started action against new AI cheats

Activision has begun taking action against the new machine learning-powered cheat software, that we covered yesterday, by taking down its promotional YouTube videos.

Activision is now aware of the new-fangled console cheats according to the Anti-Cheat Police Department, @AntiCheatPD on Twitter, who announced today that Activision has “started to shut down the YouTube channels that advertise the cheats.”

While this is undoubtedly a good first step for Activision to take, this doesn’t wipe out the cheats entirely as Eurogamer reports that the cheat’s Discord remains active with the cheats still up for sale.

Activision is now at least aware of these cheats, and can hopefully start to develop technology to detect and ban players using this software, while also shutting down the sale and distribution to stop it spreading any further. 

From what we’ve seen yesterday, the new cheating software won’t be the easiest to detect since it uses external hardware and machine learning to see what’s on your screen via a capture card and react in real-time.

The machine learning analysis allows inputs to be sent to your controller to react to what’s on-screen, with auto-aim and auto-firing to take all the pesky difficulty and fun out of the game while mowing down the competition with ruthless mildly robotic efficiency. 

Activision is now aware of the console cheats and probably are going to make plans to take them down, they started to shut down the YouTube channels that advertise the cheats this is good for the community pic.twitter.com/e6Y2DjCflk

— Anti-Cheat Police Department ?? (@AntiCheatPD) July 8, 2021

There’s no telling how long it might take for Activision to stamp out this cheating operation, or indeed if it’s even possible without the cheaters and their associated software hiding underground until the attention on them has subsided. 

With huge ramifications for competitive and high-level console play, hopefully, swift action can be taken so not everyone needs to stream with five cameras feeds to prove their authenticity.