Did I ask for this feature? No. But I do think it’s neat!
Procedural generation though. Infinite replay value with actual graphics or voiceover? Fuck yeah. Great roguelites will use genai and that’s awesome.
We’d still like the option to opt out of that mess, though. I’m not sold on the quality nor the ethics yet.
The ethics based on Intellectual Property? Quality, sure, but ethics?
Full disclosure: I’m a geek from the days of newsgroups and Geocities. I watched the rise and fall of things like Napster. And I watched IP-law get more and more restrictive. But what is “intellectual property” really? You’re effectively taking an idea and saying “this is mine, I made this first, therefore I own it”.
Around 1996, when I was 12, I thought it’d be really cool to have a small laptop that laid flat and you could hold in your hands. The designs I drew up VERY closely resembled a Blackberry. Blackberry came out a few years later. If I had filed the right paperwork, at 12, should I be able to stop them? I sincerely doubt they were spying on the drawings I made on the back of my homework. Should you get to stifle innovation just because you had the first brainfart? I don’t think so.
But okay, let’s say you’re only thinking about artistic works. Again, you’re gonna have repetition. This came out in 1995. This came out in 2008.
So what’s the issue with AI; it was trained on “copyrighted” material? K, well so were you. Are folks upset because creators didn’t get paid every time an AI reviewed their copyrighted works? Well, are they similarly upset about folks who check a book or movie out of the library? Not so much…because that’s normalized (though would NEVER go over in today’s hyper-corporate nonsense world). Okay, so are folks upset that generative works can resemble the style or “essence” of the original work? Lol, see the Jill Sobule/Katy Perry comparison above, also consider “Fair Use” and the likely transformative nature involved as well.
This isn’t an “ethics” issue…it’s an issue of disrupting existing channels for corporate power within a world sliding more and more into a dystopia of corporate fascism.
Who are you arguing against? What’s this rant supposed to teach me? You don’t like copyright? Fine, tell me with one sentence - not a wall of text.
This is just overly broad. If I use a LLM to aid me in debugging doesn’t mean the game is tainted.
I guess the issue is the wording of the statement and not the tag itself.
The line between using Gen AI as a tool and and putting unfiltered output out there is very blurry.
SteamDB is a third-party service, not affiliated with Valve.
Still, it gives consumers the choice. If you choose not to consume diamonds due to the whole diamond thing, that’s fine even though synthetics exist.
It’s like giving people the choice to not eat carbon because some forms, like natural diamonds, are exploitative. People cheer because nobody wants to eat pencil dust since it tastes so bad.
It sounds like a great idea as long as you don’t understand how anything works.
(For the people that don’t understand how anything works: Carbon is an integral component of literally everything that you will ever eat)
This analogy would make more sense if GenAI was an integral component of literally every video game we play, but it isn’t, not even close
I’m a one man Indie making a game. It’s a management/strategy game and I want to add some depth to some of the pawns you control in the game by having a portrait for each and actual voices saying things and there are quite a lot of possible such pawns so that means quite lot of portraits and voices saying lines.
If I use generative AI I can do it at the cost of my time and some electricity for my PC, if I don’t it would cost $$$ so wouldn’t be able to have those elements because that’s not just one or two portraits and voices.
Apparently if I use AI for it that makes me and my micro-company a big bad corporation.
If you’re making it for profit, and using public resources (like GenAI trained on all the commons), then the game itself should be in the commons as well. (You can still sell it or request donations though) I support the GenAI in FOSS, but for-profit closed-source games should respect their own ideals (copyrights)
A person working to make profit might not actually believe in copyrights. Nor hold any ideological kinship with the system they exist in.
Further, virtually all resources to do anything originated in “the commons” and the sort of person who’s trying to produce a game as their means of making money probably are just trying to get away from a miserable 9 to 5 (or not live under a bridge).
People who work and give away their shit for free are good people, but they are also usually people who are financially comfortable already. Its not right to dictate what resources some individual game dev is trying to use to make a living off their work.
I disagree with all three paragraphs.
Perhaps you could elaborate on why?
Firstly, if they don’t believe in copyright, they shouldn’t be advocating for copyright, i.e. don’t base your whole business model hypocrisy. “Copyright for ther but not for me”.
The second paragraph has a vaguely defined “resources”. I assume you mean that people learning art looks at existing art as a way to get better and produce new art. I don’t think this should be in the same category as copying art from “commons”. I do believe generative AI to be copying rather than learning, unlike humans.
The third paragraph tries to put a class barrier on good morals. Let’s assume that is true. I’d argue that anyone that has the time and money to start their own venture into game development also is quite “comfortable” and should therefore be measured by the same stick.
As to that assumption: Most open source is created by people in their spare time. They mostly have full time jobs to do as well, the collaboration is done for fun or as a calling to do good for the world.
First, thanks for elaborating. I welcome the challenge to my views, but now I need to counter.
they shouldn’t be advocating for copyright, i.e. don’t base your whole business model hypocrisy. “Copyright for ther but not for me”.
I never suggested that they are advocating for copyright. Utilizing the rules of a system to get ahead doesn’t mean you actively advocate for it. That said, I somewhat agree, if a small indie dev was using gen AI and then however gets litigious over people pirating their game that indicates a ruthlessness that is significantly unpalatable and I certainly would not support them. I’d view them as extremely petty and stupid to the point that the potential hypocrisy almost comes second to me though.
I do believe generative AI to be copying rather than learning, unlike humans.
I don’t see a difference. There is nothing intrinsically special about a human’s learning methods that can’t be replicated by computer systems. Even if the current generative AI methodologies wasn’t exactly the same process, that is immaterial. If I created a humanoid robot that learned to physically paint based on paintings I showed it, would that be merely “copying” instead of learning?
What if they came out with neurological enhancement implants to human brains that sped up the process of humans learning how to do art to the point that they also could trivially replicate other artist’s styles?
The difference is purely in economic consequences. In both of my questioning examples producing art becomes economically trivial, that’s the problem. The meta-physical question of whether its “art” or whether only humans are truly creative is all cope and gibberish.
The third paragraph tries to put a class barrier on good morals. Let’s assume that is true. I’d argue that anyone that has the time and money to start their own venture into game development also is quite “comfortable” and should therefore be measured by the same stick.
This is all relative/subjective and I largely just disagree. I think this is an easy position to hold if you’ve already “made it” so to speak. It comes off as someone rich tut tuting someone poorer than them for “taking shortcuts” and saying “Look, you have a computer, smart phone, a microwave! You should be happy with what you have and just work harder if you want more.”
“Good morals” is also extremely subjective. When it comes to meta-ethics, I only care about consequences, not about the virtue of individuals. Virtue only matters in my personal relationships.
Most open source is created by people in their spare time. They mostly have full time jobs to do as well, the collaboration is done for fun or as a calling to do good for the world.
Having spare time and energy to contribute to open source is a privilege in today’s society regardless of how it is achieved. You can argue that in our time of abundance this should not be the case but unfortunately it is.
Again though, I don’t view this as a negative on the part of people who contribute to open source. I strongly support such people and hope at some point I’ve reached a point in my life that I can do the same.
I totally agree that the things I make with Gen AI are public property.
What doesn’t make sense is that all of my work must also become public merelly because it’s alongside public works.
What I’m doing is years worth of my work, not just tic-tac-toe.
I mean, I wouldn’t mind making free for everybody games all day (I have a TON of ideas) if I could live were I wanted and all my own living costs were taken care of, but that’s not the World we live in so, not having been born to wealthy parents, I have to get paid for my work in order to survive.
If Copyright for you is an ideology (rather than a shittily implemented area of property legislation), then fell free to have your spin of it for the product of your time and effort, including having Contagion for public resources, just don’t expect that others in the World we live in must go along with such an hyper-simplifying take on property of the intellectual kind.
I suspect that your take is deep down still anchored on an idea of “corporation” and making profits for the sake of further enriching already wealthy individuals, whilst I as a non-wealthy individual have to actually make a living of my work to survive and you’re pretty much telling me that I can’t use a specific kind of free shit to do my work better without all of my work having to be free for everybody (and I go live under a bridge and starve).
Don’t take this badly but you’re pretty much making the case that the worker can’t have any free tools to earn their livelihood, which is just a way of making the case for “those who can afford it buy and own the tools, those who can’t work for those who own the tools”.
Whether you realise it or not you’re defending something that just makes sure than only those who have enough money to afford paying for artisan work can make great things whilst the rest have to work for them and maybe do tiny things on their spare time.
I don’t support the current system whatsoever and aim to dismantle it. But if you do, and you otherwise play by the rules of the system, then you have to accept that your “free tool” that improves your work comes at the expense of the livelihood of artists and creators and is therefore immoral to use in for-profit products. I don’t agree with the scolds who claim that every GenAI use is immoral by default, but I do think that the tech itself when applied within capitalist practices is immoral as it’s meant to deskill and disenfranchise workers.
Anyway, any defense you can make for your “little indie game” can be made by mega-corporations using GenAI just as well.
I would much rather play a game with text-only dialog and limited art assets than a game with AI generated narration or visual assets.
Same here. Everyone complaining about AI in game development have no idea how hard indie devs have it. We desperately want to make a quality product and work our asses off doing so. We’re working full time jobs for ‘The Man’ to fund it out of pocket, so every cent saved by using AI Gen is value being added elsewhere. Building games is really freakin’ hard folks. The dream is to have a studio of artist making content, but that’s literally impossible given my pay grade. It’s truly a shame to see the gaming community rally against tooling that helps us indie devs make our dream a reality.
And the artists can just go fuck themselves then I guess?
Good! Fuck the corporate slop. Justifying the use of Ai only in the name of “efficiency” is pathetic and capitalist. Pay artists a proper wage and give them the time needed to apply their craft.
No artist needs generative “Ai” to create. Only capitalist need it to produce more slop.
This comment is going to age very poorly. It sounds like just every other “progress? not on my watch!” comment people have made throughout history… Like it or not, AI generation is here and it’s not going away, good or bad.
This is definitely a topic where a vast majority of people have been “informed” of their opinions by social media memes instead of through a reasoned examination of the situation.
People who’re probably too young to have ever lived through major technology breakthroughs.
This same “debate” always happens. When digital cameras were being developed, their users were seen as posers encroaching on the terf of “Real Photographers”.
You’d hear “Now just anybody can take pictures and call themselves a photographer?”
Or “It takes no skill to take a digital photograph, you can just manipulate the image in Photoshop to create a fake image that Real Photographers have to work years developing the skills to capture”
Computers were things that some people, reluctantly, had to use for business but could never be useful to the average person. Smartphones were ridiculous toys for out of touch tech nerds. Social Media was an oxymoron because social people don’t use the Internet. GPS is just a toy for hikers and people that are too dumb to own paper maps. Etc, etc, etc
It’s the same neo-luddite gatekeeping that’s happening towards AI. Any technology that puts capabilities in the hands of regular people is viewed by some people as fundamentally stealing from professionals.
And, since the predictable response is to make some arcane copyright claim and declare training “stealing”: Not all AI is trained on copyrighted materials.
Sure, you can make an AI without stealing but all the major ones have done it. At this point, the burden of proof is on the LLM to prove they did not steal.
“Everyone who disagrees with me is misinformed”
I can’t read anything containing nuance without reducing it to an absurd Twitter comment
I’m sorry, it gets better.
I get that everyone seems to be sticking ai in everything, but it’s just another tool and it’s here to stay. People thought the digital calculator was going to make everyone an idiot… And it probably did. That’s why the world is like it is.
Calculators didn’t steal products created by artists and repurpose them as their own.
What’s the value here? This is based on the developer saying so and there’s no obligation to do so. Black Ops 6 is loaded with Gen AI, the loading screens are obviously Mid Journey like and some of the actors have been replaced by digital performances which was in the news. They won’t get tagged here for AI because it’s not in the description.
So basically this is going to just have people filtering out devs who are honest and realistically that’ll just be a few indie devs who had to use these tools because they’re a one man team that can’t afford artists.
I think we have to face the facts. Every game is going to be using these tools going forward. If you run a large studio and say no one use AI I bet you your artists are still speeding up making base textures. Your music guy is generating some starter melodies. Your writers are drafting up some filler to pad out the supplementary text.
These tools are as ubiquitous as photoshop (which has had content aware fill all the way back to CS-fucking-5) and unreal engine now (which has added it’s own AI features). The idea that’s there’s only a handful of shady individuals and mega-corps using these tools is naive.
Can a game be flagged as 'contains AI generated elements ’ by the community?
This could be useful, but could also be abused by chuds that want to brigade a game they don’t like.
Once again, what’s the value here. We only see AI when it’s someone who’s not very good with Mid Journey prompts. We’re getting to the point where people are using these tools in ways that no one will know the difference.
Content aware fill in photoshop has been around forever. AI.
If ask chat gpt what this unreal engine error message means. Al.
if get a quick llm made script to tune up Some physics, Al.
If the guy making the music generates some starter melodies. AI
If l generate a rock texture and clean it up myself to the point where no one knows. Al.
All of this is AI and all of this will go unseen to the end user, so once again we’ll be expecting developers to self report and only the honest ones will.
Here’s a test give yourself 1 or 2 seconds to make up your mind. https://www.sporcle.com/games/Raydon/image-real-or-ai-generated
It’s tough isn’t it and this is you analyzing the pixels, something we don’t do passively.
Iirc there was an obligation on steam to disclose AI use as well as the extent. Might be wrong though.
Use of AI will become mainstream. These filters need to ultimately sort how much of the game visuals/code are generated using gen AI
Traditional art and comics aren’t dead because of mainstream digital, AI will just be extra on the pile for games in the same way.
Unless people vote with their wallets against AI slop, then it would be always a controversial choice whether to even employ AI.
Probably too utopian
AI slop
That’s not what this does though.
To me, AI slop is people generating entire fake websites full of SEO terms but no information. Or people using AI tools to repost popular YouTube content. Completely worthless content that only exists to fool people.
Steam’s filter removed any game that reports using generative models at all.
That’s simply not useful unless your idea of AI slop is “someone used AI”.
The sad part is, one day in the (far) future, when real AI (not LLMs) are an actual thing, and they could code great games from scratch, there would be so much bad animosity towards AI by then that they’ll probably never see their games played.
I like human created art because it’s created by humans. If AI generated the greatest song, image, or video game i would not care—i don’t want it.
I like human created art because it’s created by humans. If AI generated the greatest song, image, or video game i would not care—i don’t want it.
Your opinion seems prejudicial, focusing on the creator of the art, and not the art itself.
Well to be fair, i don’t like art made by humans that are assholes either.
Though i dont agree that ai is inherently equal to those human assholes. Especially since for most of the important use cases (ie not spamming ai slop all over galleries online), an artist is usually the one influencing the ai tools, not the other way around.
Well to be fair, i don’t like art made by humans that are assholes either.
🤔 Fair enough, I’ll allow it. lol! 🙂
Though i dont agree that ai is inherently equal to those human assholes. Especially since for most of the important use cases (ie not spamming ai slop all over galleries online), an artist is usually the one influencing the ai tools, not the other way around.
Actually I’d agree with this. Right now we’re in the infancy of “AI” (note the quotes). I was speaking towards a future when true AI has been created, and the artist is the tool as well, and those AI beings start creating art on their own. Would decades/generations of anti-“AI” prejudice make it a hard climb for real AI to have their art seen as just art, and not a fake human “AI” creation.
Your comment seems loaded with purposefully inflammatory language intended to align AI with groups of actual real people who experience prejudice in the real world instead of corporations who have a vested interest in not paying artists, and brother, as a trans person, it makes you look like a real silly goose.
Your comment seems loaded with purposefully inflammatory language
Pointing out that someone justifies if they like something or not by who made it, vs by judging the item being made itself, is inflammatory?
as a trans person, it makes you look like a real silly goose.
I remember back in the 80’s where people were hating on a Top 40 song because it was made by a group who’s singer was gay, and thought that was very wrong, that the song itself should be judged on its own merits, and not by who was singing it.
Weird how those lessons learned fade away, needing to be learned again.
AI isn’t human. Stop pretending it is. AI takes advantage of humans. Your argument is invalid.
I did mention previously about “in the future”, some day, not today. LLMs are not AI, at least the kind of AI that I’m talking about.
But even taking your point, do we let a human always keep a job that an AI can do much for efficiently? What job protections should humans have from AIs? And for that matter, what job protections should humans have today, right now, regardless of AI? (For the record, I support Unions.)
We all need to figure this out, right now, as corporations are salavating at the though of an AI that can replace a human being’s job.
No amount of passage of time is going to make AI human. You all suggesting that in the future AI will have feelings and emotions and will care that people are prejudiced against it. You are arguing against a hypothetical that you have created in your head and isn’t necessarily going to be a reality.
Arguably the point of having machines do the work for us is that they’re NOT sentient.
Arguably the point of having machines do the work for us is that they’re NOT sentient.
Is it? Or is it for companies to not have to pay out salaries so they increase profits for AI-generated work, regardless if the AI is sentient or not?
Clearly. Sentience would imply some sense of internal thought or self awareness, an ability to feel something …so LLMs are better since they’re just machines. Though I’m sure they’d have no qualms with driving slaves.
I’m not talking about sentience per se, but how any “AI” would think, lookups (LLMs), vs synthesized on-the-fly thinking (mimicing the human brain’s procesing).
