With Generative AI (GenAI) remaining the most controversial topic in the video game industry, any mention of GenAI or AI in general is making the hair on players' arms stand up. The latest occurrence of this comes from Genshin Impact players looking a little more closely at Hoyoverse's recent updates to the popular free-to-play game's Privacy Policy, which appears to have indicated that unless players opt-out, Hoyoverse will collect players' in-game voice chat data to train an internal AI model.

Initially spotted on a now-removed Reddit post, Bluesky user Cevian shared a change to Genshin Impact's privacy policy that was made as recently as January 14, 2026. The change specifically referred to a clause from Section 1, subsection XVIII, being removed, which read, "Where applicable, our services may offer voice-based chat functions that allow users to communicate with others in real time using voice. If you choose to use such features, we may process voice communication data for the purposes described in Section 2 and Section 13 of this Privacy Policy, including providing communication services, maintaining service security and stability, content moderation, and complying with applicable laws and regulations."

Now, with the above section removed, Section 2 of the Privacy Policy, titled "Why We Collect and Process Your Personal Data," simply reads:

"Like many AI-powered experiences, we may use your user-generated input such as chat data to train and improve the model that we use to provide our Services. You can opt-out of model training anytime in your Service-related settings. Opting out will not affect your existing gameplay."

It's worth noting that the now-removed subsection XVIII statement is referring to Hoyoverse using the data it collects for things like improving its customer support and its moderation efforts. Essentially, there's no indication that Hoyoverse is using this data to train an internal GenAI model, which appears to be part of the concern players had when this policy was first spotted.

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