AI as championed by CEOs is an existential threat for many in the game industry, where greed has already made jobs very volatile, and after two years of mass layoffs, cancellations and studio closures, one might expect people to understand that.
Yes, game industry like most in our capital at all costs economic system is unhealthy, grew too much too fast during the pandemic bubble, but don’t be mistaken, many if not most layoffs and studio closures are unnecessary and only a way to boost earnings for share holders at the expense of workers.
Now AI is being used a wedge to bring back crunch (see 80 hours work week articles at Naughty Dog)
That is why many of us have a pretty hard stance on that aspect of so called AI.
As a coder who took a break, not seriously trying to push a product for over a decade (yeah the artistic side and employability was the problem), i can pronise that people will keep trying to gain advantage using AI.
When i learned coding AI was a big topic, there was absolutely no problem with AI in games, and they were often large, state machine based systems, the topic of A* would always appear, and there were a couple of good books showcasing neural nets (a dummy version)
The pattern is that nobody listened to or gave a flying F about AI or what the coders did …
Now this new generation of AI is good enough to make everyone hot under the collar, including the
City boy investors who were obviously so paranoid they dumped a load of cash into it.
I honestly wouldnt get too worried about it, im more worried about having to go into trenches to fight against a bunch of auto cannons. Now the military applications are truly unethical, perhaps on the level of mustard gas or atonic weaponry. There seems to be adequete funding with or without a tech industry bubble.
It’s not just that gamers are accepting AI-generated games as worth buying. In my opinion using AI is copying/theft, at best it’s outsourcing (aka not your creation/achievement). But the market doesn’t care and is not particularly rewarding games that are made by humans. There might be controversy but it doesnt affect sales. I will likely be forced to make games with AI in the future, due to financial reasons if my human-made games continue to be ignored, as even the people against it won’t seek out, support, or promote human-made games, or if they do they are too small a market force to generate significant sales.
Ok well AI are likely to be the typical assistant for making games too, especially software like Meshy and HuanYuan3d.
I expect this type of software could make it into the regular asset pipeline in a lot of companies, even if they deny it or buy from 3rd parties who also secretly use it.
I dont use either of these since i am experienced in Blender, i used version 2.7 a lot 10 years ago. I have made geometry node scripts and can do pretty much what i need … of course the better artwork is tempting but then it seems like everythong else in the entire game has to be photo realistic or whatever.
Do you include 3d scanning AI in your definition or just generative?
The way i think it should work is that if the developer can prove mathematically that the AI model does not over fit the training data, (not causing exact replicas to appear) then the generative model could be upgraded or defined as a creative algorithm. (Good luck to them trying to get mathematical proof to stick in court).
Then maybe people will start to accept that at some point the machine truly learns like a human does, and what it ‘sees’ wasnt anyones property as it was just a picture to be looked at. Theres nothing to stop an artist looking at paintings before going to the studio and painting whatever came into their head, so at some point, the machines generation method is the same.
Thats why i dont care. I dont really like finding AI generated images whenever i search online, but i understand that people can publish what theh want.
Also, i think its sad to see Indy devs getting all the flak for AI content, when AAA studios will probably use it more lucratively, with AAA prompts.
No it’s not. Machine didn’t “look” at anything. People did, and then they decided to put an illegal digital copy of it into the machine. You’re ascribing non existing human-like mental processes to a machine. It’s a form of pareidolia.
“It’s same as human artist getting inspired” is a common rationalization mantra that non-skilled people tell to themselves to feel better about using “ai tools” that are fundamentally based on intellectual property theft.
People have accused me of this before … but its not true.
I could equally be claiming that good artwork is a pattern-like composition of “no-brainers”.
All im saying is that theres a bundle of machine ‘neurons’, a very large matrix of them, and theyre formed into multiple deep layers of activation. Its based on many many data points so it doesnt have to closely copy an individuals style at all.
But neurologists do not claim the machine learning algorithm really mimics the human brain,
neither do machine learning engineers, for example the back propagation algorithm isnt observed in biological processes.
The point i was making is that ‘at some point’ the machines data set provably learned, and i would say that it has a brain -like capability in its own limited way.
When i say artist looked at the painting i am saying that the machine was also given a glance. I would say that to observe something is not stealing, and then j wojld say the machine certainly can observe something, tonprevent hjmans also being accused of the same form of theft.
A calculator has a brain-like capacity in its own limited way as well. So nothing special there. The difference is that unlike image generators, calculator’s creators didn’t steal mountains of copyrighted data.
Ok i am not invested in this debate, im working from an impartial perspective … i think the strong legal form of the direct answer is along these lines:
The ai being put through ‘observation’ wasnt mentioned in the license.
i can appreciate the perspective when someone feels thier work was unfairly used to train a machine to replace them in a paid company, and any/every paid company.
Cant be too harsh now or the next next next gen AI might have anti social issues.
And ‘hello AI world’ would look like a redacted FBI document.
(With black tape covering inportant non-licensed parts of the viewing area).
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Once upon a time there was a great artist named Zu. He liked to study composition and travelled to many universities to learn their wisdom. After some time he was able to see composition in other paintings and he could isolate the elements of a picture down to the merest brush strokes. The different styles he noted could easily be adapted, the compositions often obeyed certain patterns. He codified his work into a book called the principia de artes, and it was studied by many students after Zu himself died.
But Zu’s critics argue that his methods were unethical, the painters of the works he studied never intended it to be written in a book. Even the work of his students was called theft if they used the book. The book itself was branded a thief and a thieves book and locked away for many years.
There’s a relatively famous case with a painter called Wolfgang Beltracchi. He copied the style of dead artis and sold paintings he made as long lost and redescovered paintings. The only reason he got cought was that he used a wrong white color in one picture. Interessting is that the only law he actually broke was to copy the painters signatures. So any one capable of copying a style is apparently allowed to. So why should this be only allowed for people capable of using a brush ?
People who built generators didn’t “copy the style”. They copied copyrighted data and used it without owner’s permission to make for-profit products. That’s a violation of intellectual property rights according to existing copyright laws in most civilized countries.
You as an user of such products are not relevant here. Neither is “ai” because “it” is not a legal entity.
There’s no need for any new laws, especially not some sci-fi inspired thing that sounds like machines should be considered legal entities.
The laws are not the problem. “Ai” product peddlers are already liable under existing copyright laws. The problem is enforcing those laws onto corporate players that have more financial power and political influence than an average state.
Mona Lisa is in public domain. But there are millions of other images that aren’t. Using them for profit without permission is illegal at best and morally questionable at the least.
Big tech companies are anyways the owner of most copyrighted material and also of most of the important patents. It’s virtually impossible to hold them accountable. If they’re missing the right to something they’ll just buy it. You could also look at the case George Harrison and “My Sweet Lord” had he bought the rights to the song he would not had all that legal trouble.
Or look at the reason the Rolling Stones don’t play their early songs live anymore.
No, they are not. You seem to be misinformed about what “copyrighted material” is. Whenever you create something “non-material”, that automatically becomes your intellectual property and you become the copyright owner. No special legal actions are needed on your side. This right is granted to you under most civilized legal systems.
This widespread ignorance of what constitutes “copyrighted material” is precisely what “big tech” is exploiting en masse with the whole “ai” gimmick. The stance you took in your previous posts plays right into “big tech’s” hands.
Stones and Beatles signed exploitative contracts when they were young and inexperienced. No one stole their stuff. They sold it away cheaply when they didn’t know better.
The current “ai” problem is much worse than bad contracts though. In some cases there indeed were sneaky extortive one-sided eulas, but in many other cases there wasn’t even that. Intellectual property was just stolen right off.
If the copyright situation was as simple as you portait it, OpenAI would be history by now.
But that’s capitalism for you. Money rules, that what I tried to make clear with my examples.
Idealists make it mainly harder on them selves.
The copyright situation is simple. Enforcement on very powerful players is problematic though. I already said that above. However, that doesn’t mean we should shut up and play right into their de facto criminal hands. Money may rule but breaking the law shouldn’t. It’s an important distinction you’re willfully trying to muddy.