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Thoughts on preemptively banning Gen-AI?

8mon 24d ago by ttrpg.network/u/sirblastalot in rpg@ttrpg.network

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/26260249/17201676Rhaedus 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/26260249/17206513Carl 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

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

I'm thoroughly unconvinced by the argument that because giant corporations are doing evil things, the little guy ought to as well in order to "compete", and treating "AI" art as the only kind that will be posted either way.

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

That's great. And it should be encouraged. But what about modern+ settings?

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

Just because you generally need a cover image doesn't mean that it's good to support systems whose primary use case is to drive real artists into hiding.

Sure. But wouldn't such rule mean we dismiss also those who do bring something to the table but just try to get anyone's attention?

Not if they don't scam people to get that attention.

I'm afraid that's a very high bar ATM

It's meant to be a high bar forever.

"Generative AI" is a scam perpetrated by people who hate artists, while envying their capacity to create art, while also not understanding what art really is. Period.

I think https://piefed.zip/post/511096#comment_1614098also addresses this point

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

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 participate in the open source community and there's a huge number of models for the people and we (as in normal people) also steal everything we can. Main difference is money: as a whole we steal more than Meta, but Meta can afford to put it all together and pay millions to train out a model.

Open source AI can be argued to be overtaking corpo efforts, or at least in some areas. Maybe in awhile people will stop assuming AI is synonymous with monolithic corpos.

Does anyone here know what 'ft' means? A LoRa adapter? I hardly ever see people talk about AI. They seem to just refer to the surface or the vague idea of it.

If you want to ban anything that isn't "open source" you're going to hit a lot more than just generative AI. Not to mention that there are open models and open source gen AI tools, so you're not even banning generative AI that way.

You closed with "No AI." It doesn't feel like a straw man. It's fine to say no corporate AI but that might be even harder to single out.

I'm personally looking into domain specific fine tunes of small, open source models that can compete with larger models in at least one small area - specifically in roleplaying, though my interest is creating a chat bot to facilitate group gaming, not generating systems or art.

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.

I support a ban on genAI content.

I personally think it is a good idea. I know I posted about AI in a game I am running, but I was looking for human input about AI behavior to transfer into a game. I am doing my best create the AI manually and with no actual use of AI (a task far harder than I anticipated).

I see nothing of value that AI could add to this industry, and thus this community.

And if AI is banned from this community, you never will see anything of value from it. Even when such value exists.

I am fine with that.

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.

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.

Yes, always

@sirblastalot
Probably calls for an exception for specifically discussing when a large company (mis)uses "AI", so as not to silence outcry against it.

Concerning those advocating that people "just downvote it"... 1) not everyone who participates in this community does so through a system that allows downvotes (Mastodon doesn't), and 2) IME, people who post "AI" content willy-nilly tend to be so bad at people that they don't understand when they're being told off, even directly.

Don't see a problem with it, let the voting system decide if it's popular in the comm

IMO AI isn't bad in itself. It only becomes bad when it gets overused. When someone rolls the statistical dice instead of having something to say. Or to pad three points that would fit into one post, into three posts with a wall of text each

So for now I would not ban it, as the community does not seem to have a problem with AI-generated content
I agree with the other comment proposing that it has to be marked. That way at least the subset that will be adhering to that rule can be measured

And if/when that time comes, I think the rule would have to remember about gray area: if AI-gen would be banned here, would that mean that products that used AI should also be banned?
I mean, for example, I know of some products on DTRPG that have good contents but they used AI for pictures. Most often, because they are just one guy without any budget. Would such ban mean that I shouldn't point someone to that product?

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.

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.

> Speech recognition

Isn't generative, by standard usage of the term.

>(e.g. “remove background” or tools that let you mask subjects). Yes, all generative AI.

They are not. Not everything leverages a SVM or even a neural network is "generative AI". That's a disingenuous conflation of terms and technology.

> All sorts of title/logo generators.

So?

> Upscaling tools.

Are't "generative" in the context used here.

Generally speaking, sufficiently vague and plastic rules that are able to allow for things like "context" and don't provide wiggle room for "insufferable bad-faith assholes" are best employed for things like this.

All of those were around prior to generative AI. You're thinking of other types of AI like machine learning.

That's not to say companies aren't now using generative AI for these things, but as we've seen the implementations are often worse then their machine learning counterparts (See YouTube AI captions).

You're thinking of other types of AI like machine learning.

That’s all generative AI is. Machine learning applied to tasks like image generation and text generation. It’s all the same stuff. The difference between something that detects parts of an image and something that generates parts of an image is in application.

Edit: Why am I getting downvoted? I’m not making any value statements about generative AI here.

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.

Another way that allowing it could lead to it being the only thing posted is that its presence could easily scare off genuine, non-scam creators. "AI" overwhelming the open Web isn't just a matter of the volume of generated content; it's also that the presence of it has prompted people who actually make things to retreat into places that require logins or membership on the assumption that these are "safe" from scraping (which isn't always true).

if it drowns out everything else, it means that it's being upvoted. if it's being upvoted, then it means the community likes it. I see no issue with a preponderance of content coming from a single tool when the community is ultimately capable of moderating it just like any other content. why should I not be allowed to upvote something that I like because it came from AI, just because other people have a moral objection to it? I respect their right to object, but I don't think they should be able to force those values onto me. if that is their goal, then they need to articulate an issue and be persuasive, not make rules in communities in which I'm a participant.

> if it’s being uploaded, then it means the community likes it

That really isn't how the Internet works at all. Someone uploading something just means that that person likes it. It's not like they're uploading based on the collective psychic demands of the rest of the community.

thanks; that was a typo. I have edited it to upvoted, which is what I intended.

"AI is just a tool" is not how anyone uses AI. They treat AI like a free employee who will do the work for them. Note how people don't say it replaces a paintbrush, but that it replaces a commissioned artist.

"AI is not going away" is just a lie, making it seem inevitable so you stop fighting it. Just like how bitcoin is going to revolutionise currency, and now NFTs are the future.

I see complete justification in banning the garbage output from the world-burning nazi-built plagiarism machine.

And jerking off is better with some lube. Doesn't mean this is the place to show off the pics. What you do in the privacy of your own home, or at your own table, actually isn't especially well correlated to what someone else might be interested in hosting for you.