How I use AI

Last updated 24 October 2026

I'm Pietari Niinimäki, and I make Helsinki Online by myself. I use AI tools. This page lists where.

Where AI is used

Programming. AI helps me write, test and fix code, for example the networking that lets everyone see you sit on the same bench. I review what it writes.
Turning open data into a city. The city is built from real open data (City of Helsinki, OpenStreetMap, HSL). AI helps process it, for example to find trees in aerial images and to clean up the photogrammetry textures on some buildings.
Some plants. Some of the tree and ground-plant images are AI-generated. The game needs each plant in many seasons and heights, and images like that hardly exist.
Some sound effects. Many sound effects are generated for now. I will replace them over time with recordings from real creators.
People in the city. The looks of some of the people you meet were drawn with an AI image model from written descriptions, then pixelated to match the game's style.

Where AI is not used

Music. Made by a real musician, Luca Bertani-Green (@_luca.mp3_).
Hand-made art. 3D models made by people, such as the Havis Amanda statue at the Market Square, and the Helsinki Online logo, both by @bones20ca.
The game itself. The ideas, the humour, what you can do and how it feels.
The chat voice. Chat messages are read aloud by a retro speech synthesizer, not an AI voice.

While you play

Chat messages and community-made quests are checked by an automated moderation model to remove harmful content. It does not create anything you see or hear in the game.

Why

AI lets one person build what used to need a whole studio. I use it where it saves months of work, not to fill the game with filler.

And sure, AI has an environmental cost, and lots of issues. But my AI usage is a drop in the ocean compared to how much the big players burn through it. I believe AI can also be used for good, real, fun things. But if we don't do that, nobody will do it for us, and we'll only get the bad sides of AI.

If you have some concerns or questions, hit me up on Discord!