This is very helpful, finally I can filter out the AI stuff. Thanks a lot :)

However, I don't see the "No AI Tag" in my project infobox after setting it up. Am I missing something?

That there is a no-ai tag is a very good idea.

Some thoughts and questions about this new feature.

Will the sub tags have negated tags as well? I guess, most users would want to use this functionality to not see AI projects. So, like browsing for no-ai-text + no-ai-images + no-ai-sounds to not exclude all the games that used llm to generate a basis for some of their code.

The AI debate mainly focuses on anything that is called art. It is most important to disclose it for assets, since they in turn would make the projects that use them be AI using projects. But funnily enough, code does not seem to be considered much in those debates. Coders also typically do not call themselves artists. But AI usage seems to be rampant in modern software development.

Also there is certain filtering and editing options in the big graphic editing softwares that use AI tech. So from a purist's view, usage of Adobe Photoshop would constitute usage of generative AI content tool. They even have functions that have generative in their title, like generative fill that works with a prompt.

So maybe some clarification would be in order in the faq. There are people that take words literally, and if you cite music and they used ai-voices, they might think to be exempt - maybe they even are, since an AI voice does not use a prompt. And if you cite the major llm products and they "only used Photoshop" they might also not grasp that using a prompt to do something is generative AI usage, no matter how it is called in your editing tool. And there are functions that do not use a prompt, yet generate content - generative expand at least has generative in its name.

In other words, make the wording as non ambigous as you can, so even people with little or no knowledge English that see an AI translated version will understand . You might avoid some people asking support, if their thingy is considered AI or not.

Oh, and will we see the AI meta info in the information box? Currently there is no information. Only assets/games, that have this as an actual tag, have it displayed.

I had voiced despair at how flooded with AI the assets section had become, and even stopped publishing on itch altogether. This is very good news, a good start, and I'll definitely come back to itch if negative filtering does a good job of filtering out the slop.

I dont mean to sound ungrateful here but why not ban AI entirely? No one wants it, and it's just a shitty grift that actively harms the indies that your platform specifically caters towards. Itch has always been a haven for devs and artists, why even allow assets that have had no significant human editing? Moderation seems to be stretched thin, and that also seems like a faster way to get the issue done with

Will there be any punishment if someone lies? I think that a good portion of people know that people will filter No AI so they will just lie when setting the tags.

One of my titles has been flagged even though it does not use AI. How do I appeal this?

I noticed that this applies to code as well. So, if I use ChatGPT to debug and help me with code, do I also need to include a tag indicating it was made with AI? If that’s the case, I believe there will be a lot of games with the AI tag if developers are honest about it. If the goal is to filter out bad assets, I don’t think this will help much, considering the majority of games would end up with the tag. However, if it’s just to inform players, that’s fine. I’m just asking to stay informed.

If you have a public asset page on itch.io and you view your dashboard, you will now see a blocking dialog instructing you to classify your pages.

When I go to my dashboard, I don’t receive any dialog. I can edit the AI settings on my individual project pages, but I have quite a few projects and would much rather update them in bulk. Is there a way I can force the bulk dialog to show?

If I'm not mistaken, the reporting is only mandatory for asset packs at the moment, right? Will games and other projects have mandatory AI disclosure at some point in the future?

I think enforced disclosure is the most sustainable way of dealing with AI content long term. I completely understand people wanting to make informed decisions about where the content they consume comes from, and I wouldn't intentionally use AI assets in my own work.

Banning it completely could lead to human creations being unfairly penalized for perceived resemblance to AI (as has happened in academic settings), and removes the possibility of use for criticism and review—or even honest mistakes, as people not educated on the details of AI may not realize some of the tools they use could be considered AI.

Plus, there are legitimately creative human works, including on Itch, that have used AI assets. The early builds of The Roottrees Are Dead, for instance, used AI art. While I think the AI art was the weakest part of the game, the game was fully written, coded, and performed by humans, and the version now in development with fully human-created art may not have existed without those early builds.

So I think this is a healthy choice, and I'd like to see more clarity on what "generative AI" is considered to be for the purposes of tagging, as well as what the appeal process would look like if work is incorrectly reported as untagged genAI.

How long is the grace period?

"Assets comprised of generative AI (even if modified afterwards) that are not tagged will no longer be eligible for indexing..."

...How will untagged assets be identified, especially if modified after?  I didn't think we had tools that could accurately identify all AI-generated content. (We definitely can't identify AI-generated text, but that is less likely to be included in asset packs. )

I can definitely see hostile reporting of assets being an upcoming issue.  What will be used to decide if a project does or does not contain AI-generated content?

Does this apply to GitHub Copilot as well? I don’t think code should be part of this policy. Nearly every software developer uses AI tools now - whether for code completion, debugging, or generating boilerplates. It’s simply an efficiency tool.

With “AI Generated Code”, it might be a very difficult thing to know.

For example, if I use a library, and the authors of that library used AI to pad out unit tests - none of that code ends up directly in my project, but you could definitely argue that GenAI has benefited that project, and so mine.

And whilst I’ll probably know if a big library I’m using does that, what if it’s a random dependency five levels deep?

I'm not for AI as a creative disruptor; however, this is going to be difficult to enforce given how "AI" has been and continues to penetrate all aspects of content development from brainstorming (story and character ideas, pick lists, random generator tables, concept sketches), working in Adobe that includes AI, Google that forces AI for searching, productivity enhancements, prototyping and drag and drop layouts, code hints and debugging, spelling and grammar editing, AI Agents that can create and provide testing or editing feedback to mostly functional programs and whole publications in a few hours that you can then repurpose as your own outside of the AI tool, and such to the finished product. Where is the line or is there a line and how can this be enforced effectively and equitably?

I'd love an option to toggle off seeing all AI content.

Since I only used AI for the music in my game, I'm glad you added specific categories, although I would like you to also add the % of AI used and not just categories, because we can, for example, use AI sparingly.

Also give me the possibility to put my game of more than 1gb, because I can not upload my main game, and I am therefore obliged to go through Gamejolt which is a shame. Thank you in advance, I appreciate everything you do!

In fact my main problem with their idea is that we can't put a % of what we did or didn't do in AI precisely. So people can think that we generated everything when it's wrong. In addition there are still vague things like: and if it's just text correction, does it count or not?

For example, if I am the one who wrote a sentence, but GPT corrects it, is it ONLY AI? This seems to me to be both poorly done, and discriminatory for certain people.

If we make a drawing from an AI reference, is it linked to AI, or is it considered a legitimate drawing? Since AI did not generate the image, just the image reference. I need clarification.

How much % of AI counts as AI? If an artist traces over an AI image (but every line is ultimately done by hand) does it count as AI? If people report it and the artist says “Yeah it’s traced from AI” do you require them to use the AI tag? I understand this is a contentious topic but I’d like to know your stance on it.

Any plans on making it a requirement for games? 

We have a strong disagreement in our team in regards to the current state of the system.

On the surface, its goal seem to be to filter blatantly AI-generated assets which is reasonable and understandable. But in reality and based on leafo's answers, projects should be marked as AI-generated even if we used something like Chat GPT / Copilot for writing portions of the code. Our game is built by experienced and professional programmer but some scripts (small percent) were generated to save time on a game jam.

With desire to be honest we marked the game as having AI-generated parts in its code, but it leads to our game being in one big pile with more blatantly AI-generated projects. Currently it is not possible to opt-out without "lying" about use of AI in project page settings.

It does not seem fair that games with small part of AI code in technical side are put in one category with less crafted projects. It especially hurts feelings of our artists because the game is hand-drawn and a lot of effort was put into visuals. "AI Generated" tag is too broad.

It seems that games should either be give options to opt-out (which is not possible once tag is selected) or being forced to opt out (after all games are much more complex project that art assets) or categorization should be improved. It seems like "No AI" tag is made so people could filter low quality projects or assets with questionable legal status, not nice games with some chat-gpt-generated generic code under the hood. 

I honestly do not see how marking code in games as being partially AI generated helps anyone. I understand that it is more reasonable in regards to assets, especially paid ones though. But my post is about games. Perhaps there should be different tagging for games or it should be disabled for now until better way is figured out?

Please advise.  (our game is Headquarters, first game in AI-generated tag currently...)

While I agree with the sentiment here, the execution is a bit heavy handed.

I have a comedic game “Eggular Game” and I have an AI sound that plays that pokes fun at AI. It’s the only AI I’ve used in the game. However, somewhat ironically, I’ve stained my game with an AI black mark due to this. If this is to be enforced are there exceptions that can be made or can I expect my game to be removed if I don’t mark it as AI?

Additionally, what or who decides if something is AI or not?

i'm glad i'll finally be able to filter all this annoying junk out of asset search results-- but frankly, i do wish itch would just ban AI entirely. it is harmful to the planet, it's harmful to artists, it's harmful to the internet as a whole (ask wikipedia editors how they feel about it) and even if you don't really care about artists, the planet, or the continued availability of trustworthy information on the internet, it's currently in kind of a legal grey area in terms of what you can and can't sell. gamedevs using it really do so at their own peril.

I think going as far as to tag AI generated code is a bit odd. If there is one thing I can say has actually been great with the advent of AI, it's having a way to quickly debug code by sending it to ChatGPT. Even experienced programmers use it, it's just a handy tool. There's no malicious intent at all there.

How will moderators find out if your lying or not???

My advice: Just lie. If you can tell AI was used then you failed to begin with, and if you can't you have no reason not to lie about this.

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.