Players have been asking for the ability to filter out games made with Gen AI.
We've added an automatic tag on SteamDB based on the AI gen content disclosures on the store pages.
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.
The problem with using gen AI is you’re taking the effort of other hard workers for free. You thanklessly get the energy and time artists spent honing their craft because it was stolen by Gen AI. It pits hard worker vs hard worker all while the man profits.
One can make the exact same argument by saying Open Source and it would be just as incorrect.
Ultimately, the actual time and effort of the artist is not being used when a Gen AI trained on his or her work generates an output, just like when an Open Source library is used in a program the time and effort of the programmers who made that library is not being used.
(As for the rest, that grand statement that users of Gen AI are “taking the energy the artist spent honing their craft” is just laughably exaggerated and detached from objective reality)
The problem with Gen AI as it’s being used now and the main difference to Open Source, is that with Open Source the programmer is in control of how works derived from their own freely distributed code are used, by means of which license they release their Open Source code under (so, for example, some licenses do not allow that code to be part of a commercially used or sold program, no matter how small a part that is, whilst others do), whilst the will of individual artists when it comes to their works being or not part of the training of Gen AI, and what kind of limits and uses are acceptable with the derived-via-Gen AI works based on their own art, is not taken into account much less respected.
It makes absolute sense that, like for programmers, some artists decide that none of their work or works works derived from it if free to distribute (so, no Gen AI), others decide that works can be derived from their own works but only for non-commercial use (i.e. can be used to train Gen AI as long as the output of that Gen AI is not used for commercial purposes) and yet others are ok with totally free use of automated derivations of their works.
That it isn’t so, is not a problem of Gen AI as a technology (though if the training inputs are hundreds of thousands of works, the equivalent of Free With Attribution licenses might be hard to pull off) but a problem of how Intellectual Property Law is either lacking or being misused.
Your basing your entire argument on the assumptions that every generative models is trained on copyright works and also that training AI on copyrighted works is not Fair Use.
The first assumption is just false and the second assumption is not built on any established legal grounds in Western countries and is completely false in other countries with different legal systems.
Perfectly reasonable, but at the same time a little naive. Let’s shift the focus on your future customers.
What you say is true: artists are expensive and having proper art for your work can be costly.
I mean, it’s not entirely true cause young artists are not that expensive but you want very good art for your game and I can understand that.
Now, you may use gen AI to get all your art and voices. Are you sure your customers wanted that? Are you sure they wanna see all those “something’s off” portraits and that will be the deciding factor for your game?
If your game is good and fun even crappy art will sell it (look at touhou). Isn’t it better to work on the actual game with placeholder art and look for a young artist when you have the finished product instead of wasting your time fiddling with settings and prompts on a genAI?
I mean, you do you. I’m not against AI as a tool, but don’t assume people will like your game more if you plaster it with AI art. It’s like coloring your sketch with stickers. The stickers may be good quality, but it will still look like a messy puzzle…
I think most customers want a fun game that doesn’t cost $120.
I’m not against AI as a tool, but don’t assume people will like your game more if you plaster it with AI art. It’s like coloring your sketch with stickers. The stickers may be good quality, but it will still look like a messy puzzle…
If your game is good and fun even crappy art will sell it (look at touhou).
Writing good music is really freakin’ hard, but I do it on my own anyway because the whole point of making something creative is that a person is doing it. It’s truly a shame to see people rally for software made by tech bros that takes work away from real artists who could use it.
editing to be less snarky: How would you feel if generative AI could make a game and an artist or musician had it make an entire game for their art/music because it saved them money?
To a large extent that ship has long sailed in the programming world with Open Source and I even vaguely remember from back in the 90s some people claiming that Open Source would cause programmers to lose their jobs (it didn’t - software users just started to expect even more complex programs with more features and ultimately that resulted in even more programmers being necessary than before), which is eerily similar to the arguments many are making here about AI Gen.
Basically, most of the code in everyday software is already out there and freely available to all in the form of Open Source libraries (which in most projects add up to most of the code in the final executable) and there are even code generators for a number of things, since AI Gen isn’t needed for generating code (because code is a totally artificial thing not something that has to be designed so that the human perception sees it as real or appealing and in fact AI Gen is actually worse at code generation than procedural algorithms) so one can just craft normal code that generates code.
In coding the requirement for using humans has mostly moved from the making of the base parts in a program into the figuring out of how to put the freely available parts together to make a desired greater whole, tough granted the art creation part in game making (some of which I do, since I had to learn 3D modelling for my project and spend a lot of time in it, and the same for Graphical Design which I do for things like icons and UI elements) seems to still rely on a lot of grunt work in low-level shitty shit (and, curiously, the artists in the bigger game-companies are now using expensive AI tools to speed that up).
Let me turn the tables around too: would it be fair if artists and musicians weren’t allowed to use any software which is in full, contains or relies on Open Source code (for example, in the form of libraries), basically the tech level of the 1980s and earlier since almost every software now relies on Open Source code in some way?
Even better, would it be fair for artists who are trying to make it on their own and aren’t superstars?
“By using software which has not been lovingly crafted as whole by a programmer, you’re taking jobs away from programmers.”
(PS: I don’t really want that limitation for anybody)
That said, as I wrote elsewhere, just like programmers are empowered to chose what can be done with the code they make free for everybody as Open Source by choosing the License they ship with it (so, for example, if a programmer wants to force people who make software that contains some of their Open Source code to also release that new software as Open Source, they chose the GPL license, but if they want to give others more freedom to do what they want with it except just sell that freely available code as if it was theirs, the programmer chooses a different license such as the LGPL), so should artists be fully empowered to decide if what they put out there available for all can be used or not in training Generative AI and if they allow it also restrict it to only Generative AI with certain kinds of licensing (say, not for profit, or whose output carries a license that forbids commercial use).
Whilst I would like to use Gen AI for some things in my project, I don’t want to be even indirectly using the works of artists who do not want their stuff used to train Gen AI whose output can be used comercially in any way (so, even as a small part of a greater work).
I don’t want to directly or indirectly take the work of others, I only want to use directly or indirectly the work of willing artists and if there is none, then, well, though luck for me.
In the ideal I would be able to use artwork derived only from the art of artists who would be ok with me using it so, same as you can only use Open Source code (including the tiniest most obscure piece of a library) in the way the programmers are willing for you to use it (so, for example, I cannot distribute commercially a program containing Open Source code - no matter how small - which has been made freely available by the creator under a GPL license, but I can if the license was the Apache one).
If you’re mirroring the example being discussed above, then wouldn’t the alternative be that the game doesnt exist in the first place? The musician or artist cant afford to hire a game dev for x amount of time to make a game at all, thats why they used the tool. But using the tool allowed them to get closer to their vision anyway, even if it is imperfect.
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?
If they were never getting paid in the first place, did they get fucked?
The problem with using gen AI is you’re taking the effort of other hard workers for free. You thanklessly get the energy and time artists spent honing their craft because it was stolen by Gen AI. It pits hard worker vs hard worker all while the man profits.
One can make the exact same argument by saying Open Source and it would be just as incorrect.
Ultimately, the actual time and effort of the artist is not being used when a Gen AI trained on his or her work generates an output, just like when an Open Source library is used in a program the time and effort of the programmers who made that library is not being used.
(As for the rest, that grand statement that users of Gen AI are “taking the energy the artist spent honing their craft” is just laughably exaggerated and detached from objective reality)
The problem with Gen AI as it’s being used now and the main difference to Open Source, is that with Open Source the programmer is in control of how works derived from their own freely distributed code are used, by means of which license they release their Open Source code under (so, for example, some licenses do not allow that code to be part of a commercially used or sold program, no matter how small a part that is, whilst others do), whilst the will of individual artists when it comes to their works being or not part of the training of Gen AI, and what kind of limits and uses are acceptable with the derived-via-Gen AI works based on their own art, is not taken into account much less respected.
It makes absolute sense that, like for programmers, some artists decide that none of their work or works works derived from it if free to distribute (so, no Gen AI), others decide that works can be derived from their own works but only for non-commercial use (i.e. can be used to train Gen AI as long as the output of that Gen AI is not used for commercial purposes) and yet others are ok with totally free use of automated derivations of their works.
That it isn’t so, is not a problem of Gen AI as a technology (though if the training inputs are hundreds of thousands of works, the equivalent of Free With Attribution licenses might be hard to pull off) but a problem of how Intellectual Property Law is either lacking or being misused.
Your basing your entire argument on the assumptions that every generative models is trained on copyright works and also that training AI on copyrighted works is not Fair Use.
The first assumption is just false and the second assumption is not built on any established legal grounds in Western countries and is completely false in other countries with different legal systems.
Perfectly reasonable, but at the same time a little naive. Let’s shift the focus on your future customers. What you say is true: artists are expensive and having proper art for your work can be costly. I mean, it’s not entirely true cause young artists are not that expensive but you want very good art for your game and I can understand that.
Now, you may use gen AI to get all your art and voices. Are you sure your customers wanted that? Are you sure they wanna see all those “something’s off” portraits and that will be the deciding factor for your game? If your game is good and fun even crappy art will sell it (look at touhou). Isn’t it better to work on the actual game with placeholder art and look for a young artist when you have the finished product instead of wasting your time fiddling with settings and prompts on a genAI?
I mean, you do you. I’m not against AI as a tool, but don’t assume people will like your game more if you plaster it with AI art. It’s like coloring your sketch with stickers. The stickers may be good quality, but it will still look like a messy puzzle…
I think most customers want a fun game that doesn’t cost $120.
If your game is good and fun even crappy art will sell it (look at touhou).
Writing good music is really freakin’ hard, but I do it on my own anyway because the whole point of making something creative is that a person is doing it. It’s truly a shame to see people rally for software made by tech bros that takes work away from real artists who could use it.editing to be less snarky: How would you feel if generative AI could make a game and an artist or musician had it make an entire game for their art/music because it saved them money?
To a large extent that ship has long sailed in the programming world with Open Source and I even vaguely remember from back in the 90s some people claiming that Open Source would cause programmers to lose their jobs (it didn’t - software users just started to expect even more complex programs with more features and ultimately that resulted in even more programmers being necessary than before), which is eerily similar to the arguments many are making here about AI Gen.
Basically, most of the code in everyday software is already out there and freely available to all in the form of Open Source libraries (which in most projects add up to most of the code in the final executable) and there are even code generators for a number of things, since AI Gen isn’t needed for generating code (because code is a totally artificial thing not something that has to be designed so that the human perception sees it as real or appealing and in fact AI Gen is actually worse at code generation than procedural algorithms) so one can just craft normal code that generates code.
In coding the requirement for using humans has mostly moved from the making of the base parts in a program into the figuring out of how to put the freely available parts together to make a desired greater whole, tough granted the art creation part in game making (some of which I do, since I had to learn 3D modelling for my project and spend a lot of time in it, and the same for Graphical Design which I do for things like icons and UI elements) seems to still rely on a lot of grunt work in low-level shitty shit (and, curiously, the artists in the bigger game-companies are now using expensive AI tools to speed that up).
Let me turn the tables around too: would it be fair if artists and musicians weren’t allowed to use any software which is in full, contains or relies on Open Source code (for example, in the form of libraries), basically the tech level of the 1980s and earlier since almost every software now relies on Open Source code in some way?
Even better, would it be fair for artists who are trying to make it on their own and aren’t superstars?
“By using software which has not been lovingly crafted as whole by a programmer, you’re taking jobs away from programmers.”
(PS: I don’t really want that limitation for anybody)
That said, as I wrote elsewhere, just like programmers are empowered to chose what can be done with the code they make free for everybody as Open Source by choosing the License they ship with it (so, for example, if a programmer wants to force people who make software that contains some of their Open Source code to also release that new software as Open Source, they chose the GPL license, but if they want to give others more freedom to do what they want with it except just sell that freely available code as if it was theirs, the programmer chooses a different license such as the LGPL), so should artists be fully empowered to decide if what they put out there available for all can be used or not in training Generative AI and if they allow it also restrict it to only Generative AI with certain kinds of licensing (say, not for profit, or whose output carries a license that forbids commercial use).
Whilst I would like to use Gen AI for some things in my project, I don’t want to be even indirectly using the works of artists who do not want their stuff used to train Gen AI whose output can be used comercially in any way (so, even as a small part of a greater work).
I don’t want to directly or indirectly take the work of others, I only want to use directly or indirectly the work of willing artists and if there is none, then, well, though luck for me.
In the ideal I would be able to use artwork derived only from the art of artists who would be ok with me using it so, same as you can only use Open Source code (including the tiniest most obscure piece of a library) in the way the programmers are willing for you to use it (so, for example, I cannot distribute commercially a program containing Open Source code - no matter how small - which has been made freely available by the creator under a GPL license, but I can if the license was the Apache one).
If you’re mirroring the example being discussed above, then wouldn’t the alternative be that the game doesnt exist in the first place? The musician or artist cant afford to hire a game dev for x amount of time to make a game at all, thats why they used the tool. But using the tool allowed them to get closer to their vision anyway, even if it is imperfect.