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Louis Dubois10 days ago (2 edits) (+2)

I have seen that in the "ai generated" tag, once you deactivate the NSFW display at your settings (because otherwise you will scroll through an endless list of that), there are many good games that use ai at some point. 

I cannot tell in what part they use ai, except in very few cases. The quality is good, and there are very original ideas and creativity. It seems the community is not restrictive or doesn't care. 

So I understand that if some people need the tag because they don't want to browse games that use ai in some way, it's their right. 

So when I upload mine I'll use the tag. But it may be good that it is named in a different way. If you don't change the name, it's OK, as the community understands it the right way. 

But "ai generated" sounds like most of the work is randomly generated by ai. That's not the case of the games I see there, except maybe the graphics of the NSFW visual novels (most of them NSFW). 

Some name may be "ai assisted", which reflects the reality of people using ai as a tool of the box for parts of their work. 

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redonihunter10 days ago(+2)

If you search positive, you can use the sub tags for graphics, sound and writing.

In the suggested box there currently is only no-ai and ai-generated. Both include code, something most people will not care about. The games where you did not see which part was ai might have had "ai code". 

But code is not content! Not to my understanding of language and not to the current description of what the tag means.

Featuring content created or edited through generative AI, such as AI-driven narratives, character interactions, and generated assets.

Also, "AI Generated" sounds like the game was made by an AI or the gameplay is AI driven. There are games like that. They either have a llm on your computer or connect to a llm service to let an npc act. 

The tag should be named ai-content or similar and exclude code. Respectively no-ai-content. The "full" tags could be named no-ai-usage and ai-usage.

The absolute majority of users will not have read this thread and have no idea that code is included in "ai generated". It must be usable intuitivly by tag name and description. I mean, it is a popular thread, but only has 10k non unique views.

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Louis Dubois10 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

"no-ai-usage and ai-usage."  That sounds more precise and right, IMHO. 

I actually use Microsoft Copilot as assistant. It behaves like a person. It makes mistakes, bad coding, and all. But it's great for ideas, for formatting, and when you don't remember how something was done it tells you an unusable example that you have to adapt.

So I suppose I have to use the ai coding tag, if it existed. Or not? As you see the real life practice is not at all as people think. 

Then the ai art part. It also means making source images  from scratch, then using my own styles, then rendering concepts and people I've created, then retouch and possibly iterations, paint parts, paint on top, recreating other parts by hand... Not at all as people think. 

So the use is more like ai-usage than ai-generated. I know many other people work this same way, specially if they already had artistic and coding skills before ai. 

So in my opinion that is how the tag should be named, exactly as you suggest. 

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Magicsofa10 days ago(+1)

Why does the quality of the end result matter? For those of us who want to support developers who refrain from using AI, the end result is irrelevant. It is the process itself that is in question. Your example is kind of like saying "Yeah I know they steal their cars, but they do a really good job of fixing them up afterward." Or, "I know this company pollutes the environment, but I like their burgers." 

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Louis Dubois10 days ago(+2)

It's your right to do as you wish and that's why the tag is there. I don't wish to debate more about this. It depends on if you think that training is theft or not, or if you think all the work is done by the machine or not. I haven't a simple point of view on any of those aspects, and distinguish shades of gray. 

But there's already many ais that were trained and work ethically,  and in 2025 there will be a major release of at least one that is fully trained, not on donations or similar, but on public domain images (classical art). So this is a debate that is already becoming old, soon will have no sense at all, and I think the existance of a tag has full sense so everyone does as they wish.

But about that: I think quality is important and I value more to avoid flooding of crap than how something is done. Anything with quality involves human work, no matter what tools were used. I saw sites completely flooded by crap that were not ai at all, and others flooded by ai. I value quality, inspiration and work. That's why. 

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redonihunter10 days ago(+2)

Well said.

It is just not "the process" that is complained about or questioned. It is the result: cheap artworks. And instead of attacking this, they attack unethical ai systems or large power consumption. Both wich can be debated or remedied.

Especially the power consumption is a bit confusing. I can install a llm system on my desktop and churn out cheap artworks. This takes less power than me working on hand made art on that same desktop. Either ai is cheap to make or not. If it is cheap, it cannot suddenly be more costly in production when it suits the argument.

So better to "attack" the quality. Most AI works look AI. Why? Because they look the same. Uninspired, bland, out of place. And if they do not, you can bet that the developer put a sizeable amount of sweat into the work.

I do see parallels to painters and photographers. A painter takes days, weeks to paint something that a photographer can take as  a picture in seconds without knowlege of paints and canvas and anatomy and so on. Yet photography still evolved to be considered an art. Curious, isn't it.

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Magicsofa10 days ago(+1)

Power consumption is more of a concern when using company servers that you don't control, I agree that using a model locally on your own machine would be (probably) harmless. And by the same logic, training it on only data that you own should also be harmless.

In regard to tagging though, I would suspect that Itch wants to keep things as simple as possible. If you really need a disclaimer then you can add it to your page, each developer can be as specific as they want about their process. 

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Yogurt The Horse10 days ago (1 edit)

Even when you use company server it is still more efficient as it does not really matter where you use energy - on your pc or on commercial server. (In fact, I believe commercial servers are more energy efficient). Because those networks use a lot of energy in a short period of time but alternative is to use average amount of energy for much longer period of time. Of course it is not always like that and just to be clear: I do not have exact numbers but it is how I assume the situation

But when we are talking about energy I always think people who really care about energy that much should not use x86 processors and services like Steam or Itch as they run their software on big commercial servers. Because where to put the line?

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redonihunter10 days ago(+1)
And by the same logic, training it on only data that you own should also be harmless.

And yet, I usually see all generative ai treated the same way in these discussions and with the handling of the tech. There is no differenciation at this point about any legally non-ambigous or ethically "clean" solutions. It is ai or not ai. And that is why I am lamenting that arguments against the tech should be solid and future proof instead of shortsighted and emotional.

With the current/initial filters provided there is also only ai yes or no with no practical information if it is content or just the code (yet?). Unlike artists, developers embraced the tech. Or at least that is my impression. It is the developers that create code with the tech. But with art, it is usually not the artists that use it to create more art, but people that could not draw at all to create images. Maybe it is, because in software it is a common concept to reuse other's code from templates, examples, and of course your own previous works and adapt it to new situations. In the visual arts that is frowned upon as "tracing".

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Louis Dubois9 days ago(+2)

There are many artists using AI. Also many painters, that generate references with it, or animate their own paintings in digital, and many mixed media artists, or hybrid artists. They all can draw and paint, as myself.
In one year or less, as public domain fully public sourced models appear and people identify the ones that are ethical, everyone will use it, except a few.
I marked my game with the AI tag, gladly. I hope the name changes to "ai usage", but it will be obvious that my work is a mix of traditional and generated skills as soon as people see it, so I don't really care. It's impossible to make a half decent game solely on AI.
The confusion about licenses, copyright, and polemizing on all this subject, fueled by the media, has damaged everyone. I understand the hate about the flooding of crap, but I hope it also becomes an old issue (exactly as when people got tired of DSL cameras and stopped annoying everyone making photos all day long).

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