I’ve been reading about the user revolt on the Twin Peaks subreddit calling for a ban on AI art. As best I can tell we don’t really have people posting AI stuff here yet, but I’m wondering if it would be a good idea to ban it before it becomes a problem. I’m soliciting feedback from y’all on this, please let me know what you prefer.
Thanks everyone for your feedback. I get that this is a contentious issue, and I appreciate everyone being nice to eachother (and me) while discussing it. (Those of you that didn’t, you know who you are)
Based on the upvoted comments and the arguments that I found most cogent, I will be banning generative AI in the community.
A few related issues were raised, and I’d like to explain how I intend to address them:
https://ttrpg.network/post/26260249/17201676 Rhaedus raised concerns about the difficulty in determining if something is AI generated or not. As with all rule enforcement on this site, I’ll be relying on you all to report suspected violations, and I promise I’ll give you my best-effort attempt to make a fair judgement.
https://ttrpg.network/post/26260249/17206513 Carl and others raised concerns that this might impact posts predominantly about human-created content that have some trivial or incidental amount of AI generated comment. In such a situation, if the use of Gen AI is really that minimal, it would never come to my attention in the first place, and therefore wouldn’t get removed anyway.
Several users advocated for an explicit carve out for discussions about the use of AI, which is a good idea and will be included in the rule.
Thank you again for your input and your civility.
Ban GenAI.
As RPG enjoyers, we have an obligation to support smaller creators that ensure the hobby isn’t just DnD.
I’m afraid the result will be exactly opposite. A lot of smaller creators use AI in some form (some better, some worse), where one most probably won’t ban D&D from community named “rpg” because, even with the hatred from non-D&D crowd, the interest is too big to not address it
I, for one, am not interested in “creators” who see generating fake art for their TTRPGs as some “necessary evil” on their way to making a quick buck. These people deserve to fail.
Wouldn’t that mean that only those who are big enough to afford commissioning art (or not be afraid to lie about generating it) will pass?
Believe it or not, you can release written content without professional art. Used to be done all the time. Deciding you want to skip ahead in your progress as a publisher and use tools that have been built off the back of unconsenting contributors doesn’t entitle you to someone’s platform.
Yes, one can do that. But, probably because of how content ( in broad meaning) works, it’s not being done. That’s why I’m afraid such rule would mostly cut out the small-fries
What makes you say it’s not being done? Where are you somehow finding a lack of content?
There’s free tools, maps, oneshots, entire games with 1-2 page rulesets being posted online all the time that aren’t utilizing AI. All for free. The TTRPG community is bursting with content.
Mostly stuff that is not fantasy and not a spaceship
I don’t suppose I see all that is happening in modern+ RPG branch (niche?). But I do support a few creators on Patreon, I follow a few creators on DTRPG, I follow a bunch of blogs. And I see all walks of AIGen
- things without AIGen that look well good for the creators that they are able to do the content AND a cover image/presentation
- things without AIGen that look poor but the content is good I would not hold it against the creators to try improve the looks with AIGen. I know that this is the point we don’t agree on, I just wanted to point this out
- things with AIGen that have good contents clearly the creators like from the previous point but after taking that decision
- things with AIGen that IMO are crap yeah, this is a waste of everything
That’s why I’m more in “let downvotes tell the story” camp. Because in the end it’s not the use of AIGen that makes a thing bad. It’s the decision of the creator that “this is good enough”. And without covering the bad stuff too, we are just sweeping it under the rug
Or willing to, y’know, use stock art or not include art, and damn the people who think TTRPG books only have value insofar as they have lots of new pictures.
I share the view that rpg content mostly does not need images. But I can bet it sells better and gets better reach when it does
So… you have no concrete support except a gut feeling?
I have an example where I’m sure the dry presentation does a disservice to the content. For someone who does not care about AI vs no-AI, it will look less professional than the titles next to it. But I don’t want to turn this into a vivisection of a particular example
Hence my calling out the “necessary evil” excuse.
I’m afraid it’s not an excuse but the reality. Whatever the reason one does content for, whether it’s additional income, trying to change career or just clout, without reach you don’t have an audience. In order to have reach, someone has to choose to click on that link in the feed. I am sure that an image does help with that And stock art places often either have non-stock art pirated anyway, or there’s nothing in there
I have personally found that art from fairytale stories that’s too old to have copyright can be a fun way to fill in little margins and decorate things. There are some sites that make them available with an explicit “this is way out of copyright, you can use this for whatever you want but please credit us for supplying it”
That’s great. And it should be encouraged. But what about modern+ settings?
Public domain or stock images combined with an afternoon of Gimp/Krita.
Had a friend who started with no experience and they managed to make some damn professional looking art for their playbook.
I’m afraid they are an exception to what is happening
If someone doesn’t care enough about their product to actually do work on it, why should I care about looking at it? If I wanted to see AI generated slop, I’d go to one of the many megacorps that’ll generate it for me rather than paying some guy on Itch.io.
That is right. But that is not what all AIGen stuff is. If someone creates a cool adventure but uses AIGen to make their fluff box sound like a radio speaker because they lack the skills to make it so, is that a not caring enough?
Nope, it isn’t.
Cheaters should never be allowed to prosper. It undermines the entire idea that creative work is of value, and will inevitably lead to a day when artists are seen as as much of a piece of scum on someone’s shoe as cashiers are.
I think we are way past the point when creative work is enough
So you’re arguing so hard to replace artists because you already don’t value them?
No. For one I don’t believe it will replace artists. What I expect is that we will never be able to hold wotc, hasbro, etc to this standard. Which means they’ll have an even higher advantage against one-person creators
The artists working for big ones will be using AIGen to speed up their work. Same as using search engines to find info and references
Creators for which the AIGenned cover is enough, won’t commission a real artist anyway
I’m afraid that such rule here ( meaning we are social network, not the shop) would skew the scale towards the big ones - they’ll be getting more coverage, even here
This is indeed the thing, there is a long road between using an AI powered spell checker, and a full AI generated game.
Let’s go further, if a volunteer uses their deepl subscription to translate an indie game they like (with the author’s permission) , and do a manual review afterward. The kind of stuff you can sometimes do for your player, is it AI slop?
Exactly. I think that the issue is not black and white
I think one of the features of the fediverse is that you can have a bunch of subs on the same topic (with the same name, even!) on different instances. I assume someday there will be at least one rpg community that bans ai and at least one that actively encourages it, so I think in your shoes I would be asking myself which one I want to run. Personally, I plan on contributing more to spaces that are human-only, but it puts a lot of onus on the mod team to identify and remove ai content, which is getting increasingly difficult to identify reliably.
I think in general it’s a good idea for all AI generated content to be categorically separate from their authentic counterparts. I don’t participate in this community.
My 2c:
The technology that makes the fediverse is based on open source principles.
The corporate world has made untold billions off of the backs of the open source community, not just by stealing projects outright, but by throwing a closed source application on top of an own source foundation.Hell, every Linux user in the last 20 years can easily point to features in Windows, Mac, Android and iOS that are blatantly stolen from open source.
Almost all AIs are the exact same they shamelessly steal from the open internet, from all of us.
No AI.
I don’t see much value in providing storage and bandwidth for things that people didn’t put enough of themselves into to bother lifting a pencil. There are enough boosters for that sort of thing out there already that they can do the job of supporting them with material resources.
Ban that shit!
I would be okay with a ban on AI generated content.
At the very least, I request a disclosure on any AI content.
So like, if you make a little RPG yourself and used some AI tool to make the art, you are required to disclose that. Likewise, if the flavor text for some of your game came from an AI, would-be consumers should be alerted. Heck, if it was used in the editing phase put that in the ai disclosure blurb.
Just be careful with your definition. Here’s some things that are “generative AI”:
- Speech recognition
- Zillions of AI tools in photo editors (e.g. “remove background” or tools that let you mask subjects). Yes, all generative AI.
- All sorts of title/logo generators.
- Upscaling tools.
Think about the reason why you want to ban generative AI: Is it because it sucks? Or because you have something against training AI models with images posted publicly to the Internet? Is it the environmental impact of data centers?
Be clear in your ban statement as to your reasoning so it doesn’t seem arbitrary and capricious.
If you ban it. It feeds until the delusion that they’re persecuted.
I think the right move is always allowing it, but requiring a tag [ai] so it’s obvious.
If people don’t like it, they can down vote it. Or block accounts that always post it.
If the people posting it don’t want down votes, they can post to one of many explicitly pro-ai coms where mods ban people for down voting.
The only issue may be the ai fans are probably going to build bots to upvote anything tagged as AI. They tend to be weird and really care about votes.
If they’re gonna act persecuted anyway, why not persecute them? A thief might have a persecution complex, but they’re still a thief, so you arrest them for theft.
AI is just a tool. if some have a philosophical or moral problem with it then they can abstain.
AI not going away, and its use will only increase. so I’m the long term it will either have to be allowed, or this sub will fade into obsolescence.
I see no value in banning it.
Drama that deepens prejudice.
People insist it’s low-quality. And if it’s good, then it’s robbing artists. And if you’ve never commissioned an artist in your life, then it’s anti-environmental. And if running it locally barely warmed your video card, then it’s theft. And if you’d otherwise borrow images from online… then shut up. Shut up is why it’s bad.
I’d understand marking it, because some people still don’t recognize it. But when they do they try to un-feel whatever reaction they just had. Oh that clever idea was illustrated by a robot? Then it means nothing, lacks intent, isn’t art, fnord fnord etc. The minature version of tearing posters off your wall, insisting you never liked your favorite band.
Folks, the robot that draws anything isn’t going anywhere. Make your peace. The software is aggressively available for local use, apparently simple enough that tech-bro douchebags can figure it out, and most damningly, was immediately adopted for pornography. It could at worst be chased underground… but it won’t be. You will see people make things with this tech, when they otherwise couldn’t, and at some point your distaste has to end.
@mindbleach @sirblastalot My distaste knows no end.
Your performative hatred is boring. People did the same chest-beating ingroup behaviors, whining about CGI. Oh so artists don’t need anatomy and composition? It just does tweening for you? This sucks, that’s cheating, you only used a computer. It’s not real art.
Obviously CGI is a lot better now, versus when people where declaring they’d die mad about Tin Toy. But that’s the point: this tech has existed for like three years. What it does for free will be taken for granted. Nobody’s impressed that Pixar movies are animated on-ones. Nobody will be impressed when movies animated without actors still look and sound real.
The point is the story, the visuals, the edit - the experience of watching something humans put together, using whatever tools exist. Your reasons to complain will dissolve. If the complaints continue anyway, the words never mattered.
