This has been on my mind since early in the jam, but I wanted to take care not to make anyone feel attacked while also being clear about my stance on generative AI. The simple fact is that I didn't prohibit AI-generated content in the description of this jam--in future jams I will--so I won't be removing anything made for the jam that included generative AI in its creation. Of the entries currently in the jam, I can find non-AI sources for the images used, so it looks like it's not currently an issue, but the question has come up and I know some people participating are more friendly towards generative AI than I am. However, I wanted to explain why I moved from being more OK with AI to being pretty strongly against it.
Arguments Against Even Small-Scale Generative AI Use
These aren't the only arguments against generative AI, but they are what I find most relevant to me and my values.
- AI models often use art as training data without getting the artists' permission first. Sometimes sites quietly update their terms of service or settings to sneak art into their training sets without artists even being aware of it. I find this to be pretty unethical and enough for me not to want to give these companies my time/attention/money, but to make matters worse...
- These tools will be used by people/companies who can afford to hire artists to avoid hiring artists. I used to think of myself as justified in using it because I'm usually making games on a $0 budget and make very little, sometimes nothing, off of many of my games. However, I think by legitimizing generative AI on the small-scale, we end up legitimizing it in general. Combine this with the point above and what you get is artists having their art used without their permission (read "stolen") to train the machine that will take their job.
- It looks wrong/bad--good enough for a corporation to use it over an artist who will cost them more, but lacking human care and curation. Even as generative AI makes fewer mistakes in the number of fingers and teeth or whatever, what it kicks out often hovers in the uncanny valley and lacks soul/curation that gives the art feeling and meaning. Even stuff that's fooled me on first look bugs me enough that I look deeper and discover that the image is, in fact, AI. I find when stock images are carefully selected by the author, even if they don't perfectly fit the game in a literal sense, because of that care of curation they often sell the vibe so much better than AI images do. Heck, even bad drawings bring personality to a game that AI images lack.
Other Options
Hopefully that's not too much of a rant, but it's clear where I'm coming from on this. So, going from here, if you were planning to use generative AI in the artwork of your game, I encourage (not require) you to look for stock/royalty free images to use instead or come up with some other solution for your game's visuals. If you have AI text, I encourage you to rewrite it. I'd be happy to assist with making new covers or editing your text to make it more human if you'd like. For the record, so far I haven't read any text that screamed "AI" to me, so maybe no one used it for that, and all the cover images so far have AI sources as far as I can tell.
Some places for royalty-free images are Pixabay.com (you have to screen out AI results, though), https://freesvg.org/, the National Gallery of Art, NASA, and the Smithsonian.
Like I said earlier, for the purpose of this jam, this is encouragement to avoid generative AI, not a requirement. I'm not looking for a back-and-forth discussion about the ethics of AI in this jam's discussion (there are plenty of other places for that), but if you have a concern or request specific to this jam, please reach out to me individually at any of those places I can be found. Discord, Bluesky, or emailing mrbdaily13@gmail.com are probably your best options. I'm sure some people will wish I just kicked out any entries that involved AI and others will be annoyed that I'm making such a big deal over this. I'm doing my best to be fair while addressing something that I believe is bad for artists and art. Sorry I wasn't more clear about this from the start. Won't happen again.
Happy forging!
--Daily