Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮Seeing more and more games on Steam have their AI generation disclosures like “don’t worry it’s just backgrounds, voices…and so on”.
If you can’t be bothered to make it, why should I be bothered to play it? Or write about it?
Inflammatory wording on my part, just to hammer the point home. The point still remains either way. Apologies if anyone is upset by the “can’t be bothered bit”.
I get hundreds of emails per week, sometimes in a day - what am I gonna pick? AI, or one without? Easy choice.
And I see people are jumping on kitbashing and pre-made assets and stuff but - that is *entirely different*. Someone, an actual person, still put effort into it. Tons of games reuse assets all the time, there’s literally nothing wrong with that.
LR@gamingonlinux did you ever dream of having a gatekeeper role? :) i support your position btw
Drakon@gamingonlinux I think it’s important to also differentiate here. Using bought assets from a store is totally legit, as long as you use them creatively. That’s what they’re there for. But, just buying a whole game template and swapping out the assets with other bought assets or just do nothing.. that’s shitty. At least put some effort into it…
Leminski@gamingonlinux I try use a "harms the artist" thing to determine if it's OK to use these (LLM, Diffusion etc)
E.g. I'm making backgrounds for a game I'm going to sell, I'm robbing an artist by using diffusion. If the artist is offering free material, well that's fine as it's their work.
Other example: I'm just making a picture of a monsty for a D&D game to show my players. It's not a big thing, and I did not have diffusion, I simply wouldn't be showing them an image at all, or just showing them some free-stock image. OK to use diffusion.
Making a billboard to advertise my product? You bet your ass I'm harming an artist with "AI".
Italian Skeleton@gamingonlinux My 2 cents: AI assets should be only used as quick and dirty placeholder stuff, used exclusively to get to the prototyping phase faster, a player should never see them in the final game
Controversially(?), I hold this position for stock assets too (except for sound effects), as using them deprives the game itself for an opportunity of self-characterization and identity
Gustavo@ItalianSkeletonGaming @gamingonlinux It's complicated: people may tend to keep the placeholders thinking "they are good enough". Reminds me of a small booklet I wrote: I'm no artist, so I used some AI (I guess it was Google's Imagen) for placeholder pictures and I sent to the rest of the team, which included professional illustrators. After some weeks they returned it for review: they didn't replace the placeholders! Of course, it didn't pass the review.
Flux@ItalianSkeletonGaming @gamingonlinux I'm fine with stock assets for stuff like photo materials, where two different teams might make what are basically identical looking materials eitherway due to being copied directly from nature.
Chris Wood@gamingonlinux completely agree. Well said.
Semitones@gamingonlinux the audio clip of a pig oinking in Warcraft 2 comes to mind. Pretty sure they just used a well-known clip from a sound library because I've heard it so many other places. And it's totally fine
Dawid@gamingonlinux For me that's perfectly fine for small studio without budget. I can imagine, if I'd like to make a game with my friend and spend a year or two without income to release game, where majority of assets or background noises don't have impact on gameplay, but just existence of them highly influences player experience, I would choose to generate them instead of spending another year burning personal money and struggling to survive.
AI models needs to be ethical, not based on stolen data, otherwise it's same as piracy, etc., etc., but for some cases I can see that's reasonable to use them.
Such things are now created by underpaid employees on contracts without basic employee laws - what's worse then tbh?
AI models needs to be ethical, not based on stolen data, otherwise it's same as piracy, etc., etc., but for some cases I can see that's reasonable to use them.
Such things are now created by underpaid employees on contracts without basic employee laws - what's worse then tbh?
Frank@gamingonlinux I feel somewhat conflicted about this. At what point is AI not just another tool a developer or creative person can add to their toolbox? Long, long ago I hand coded 8 bit sprite matrixes. Then came tools to draw your sprites which dumped the matrix for you. 3D is just a long road of ever more versatile tools that let you apply templates and logic to create and animate what you need.
Tau 🏳️🌈@fschaap @gamingonlinux I think if a creative person or artist used an AI for this they would disclose it properly and describe (even enthuastically) how the AI improves their work and art
skribe 🇺🇦 
@fschaap @gamingonlinux I think the line can be drawn at where did they get their AI data set from. If they're taking it without payment (or credit) to the original creator, that has got to be a red flag. If they're using their own in-house data (like some stock photo places have) that raises fewer concerns. Of course, that's ignoring the massive energy requirements AI has, but so do a bunch of industries.
Gloopsies 
Ai is not a tool it's an excuse to steal other people's work while wasting insane amounts of resources
@gloopsies @gamingonlinux Sure, the current implementation by robber barons is that too. And 'AI' is a terrible term. But where do you draw the line between a pathfinding algorithm, an asset generation algorithm and a generative conversation model and the other code and algorithms you use?
Does it take other people's work without their consent? That's an easy line to draw
@gloopsies @gamingonlinux Yep, I am all for drawing that line.
@fschaap @gamingonlinux One thing would bother me is if the majority of things I see on a game was AI generated. I have saw some games on itch.io where all imagery is AI generated and... its horrible. Sure, there are comments like "don't let the comments complaining about AI get you down", but, come on, it only shows the developer have quite low standards. At least those were free games, probably their first ones too, but, if they are making a free game, couldn't they find someone to team with that knows how to draw something for free? Or just code a text-only game first before adventuring into more complex challenges? I have my share of text-only games I made. Or just do programmer art. The normalization of AI for artwork worries me a lot.
@qgustavor @gamingonlinux Whatever currently passes for 'AI' makes it way easier to make slop. Very annoying, but if enough people simply ignore them and don't reward them with money or attention, it will hopefully slowly descend into a mostly filterable problem like spam.
Matt Mascarenhas@gamingonlinux Same. I've long wanted game listings to include an "engine disclosure" too, since I personally value the engine itself as intrinsic to the creative work.
Alastair Temple@gamingonlinux damn right! If they aren't going to treat players (and frankly for that matter, artists of all sorts) with respect, why should they expect any respect back.
Fangoliketea@gamingonlinux that's how they bring the doom for playing game. Let's Ai did that shiit. So what we are playing ?
Berin@gamingonlinux You're right and you should say it 
GrumpyDad 🇺🇦🇵🇸@gamingonlinux ... or pay for it.
Dan Seitz@gamingonlinux This sits in the uncomfortable space between "I am not an artist" and "I need an artist to complete my project but am unable to pay them."