D&D General DMs Guild and DriveThruRPG ban AI written works, requires labels for AI generated art

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The output of human artists and writers is also based on their inputs (along with something mysterious happening in the black box that is their brains, plus years of work refining their output).

However, if we told a human "write me a knock-off John Grisham novel" and then chose to sell that in lieu of a John Grisham work, outraged John Grisham fans would quite rightly burn down Doubleday Books for doing so.

I think the disconnect in a lot of the generative AI discussion is that proponents are ignoring the second half of that equation.

 

[Reynard]

I think this stuff is really interesting to think about in a considered and open minded way. it is easy to say that the current generative AI is bad because of the way it was created and what it means for workers and artists (SAG/AFTRA is striking for a reason). But those things aren't the whole of it.

Let's take a not too speculative possibility and think about the ethics of it. Since this is a RPG/D&D site, we'll start there.

Mindi is a freelance RPG designer and writer. She has written a couple million words of RPG adventures, settings and other materials -- all work for hire. She decides to purchase her own generative model and train it on her own writing along with all the OGL content that she can find. Let's assume that she is very careful and only actual OPEN content ends up in the mix.

Mindi then starts generating a line of setting and adventure material using her self trained AI. She develops the prompts and tweaks the results, but the vast majority of the words that make it into the published books are generated by the AI.

Is Mindi doing something wrong? Is she "creating" this work? Should she be banned from selling it? How does the fact that she does not own the cpyright to her own words she used to train the AI figure in, if at all?

 

[Reynard]

The output of human artists and writers is also based on their inputs (along with something mysterious happening in the black box that is their brains, plus years of work refining their output).

However, if we told a human "write me a knock-off John Grisham novel" and then chose to sell that in lieu of a John Grisham work, outraged John Grisham fans would quite rightly burn down Doubleday Books for doing so.

I think the disconnect in a lot of the generative AI discussion is that proponents are ignoring the second half of that equation.

People have been paying people to create knock off works for literal ever.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

People have been paying people to create knock off works for literal ever.

But not with the express intent of putting the original artists out of business. That's what's new and why people are upset.

 

[Divine2021]

The amount of hand waving away the basic fact that AI art is theft isn’t surprising, but it should be called out for what it is—justifying not paying artists for their work and normalizing stealing the work of others.

Art has value. Artists deserve acknowledgement, recognition, and financial recompense. AI art is, by its very generative nature, theft.

Lawsuits, litigation, and legislation are all coming. Good.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think this stuff is really interesting to think about in a considered and open minded way. it is easy to say that the current generative AI is bad because of the way it was created and what it means for workers and artists (SAG/AFTRA is striking for a reason). But those things aren't the whole of it.

Let's take a not too speculative possibility and think about the ethics of it. Since this is a RPG/D&D site, we'll start there.

Mindi is a freelance RPG designer and writer. She has written a couple million words of RPG adventures, settings and other materials -- all work for hire. She decides to purchase her own generative model and train it on her own writing along with all the OGL content that she can find. Let's assume that she is very careful and only actual OPEN content ends up in the mix.

Mindi then starts generating a line of setting and adventure material using her self trained AI. She develops the prompts and tweaks the results, but the vast majority of the words that make it into the published books are generated by the AI.

Is Mindi doing something wrong? Is she "creating" this work? Should she be banned from selling it? How does the fact that she does not own the cpyright to her own words she used to train the AI figure in, if at all?

That doesn't strike me as an issue, since it's essentially just her using generators of her own creation to generate the seed of her product. For the foreseeable future, Mindi would have to get involved to clean up the end result. A number of today's designers have been very open about using the Tome of Adventure Creation and Dread Thinganomicon to get the ball rolling for their own works, for instance. (Neither creates anything resembling a complete adventure, to be clear.)

What I think people are concerned about isn't about Mindi creating works, but when Dave, who doesn't know Mindi and doesn't have her permission, takes her works to create Mindi-like products to compete with hers. And since it's computer generated and he's not going to sweat the quality, he produces one a day, while she can only do one a month, and quickly floods the market with competing products.

There are a lot of Daves in the market right now. As far as I know, there are zero Mindis. And that's a big part of the problem.

 

[Reynard]

That doesn't strike me as an issue, since it's essentially just her using generators of her own creation to generate the seed of her product. (For the foreseeable future, Mindi would have to get involved to clean up the end result.) A number of today's designers have been very open about using the Tome of Adventure Creation and Dread Thinganomicon to get the ball rolling for their own works, for instance. (Neither creates anything resembling a complete adventure, to be clear.)

What I think people are concerned about isn't what happens to Mindi, but when Dave, who doesn't know Mindi and doesn't have her permission, takes her works to create Mindi-like products to compete with hers. And since it's computer generated and he's not going to sweat the quality, he produces one a day, while she can only do one a month, and quickly floods the market with competing products.

There are a lot of Daves in the market right now. As far as I know, there are zero Mindis. And that's a big part of the problem.

There will absolutely be more Daves. But the world is already full of Daves. Remember "news aggregators" in the early days of the web? Terrible, mindless, worthless sites that still managed to generate tons of traffic and enrich their shady-ass developers. Those weren't made illegal. Why? because that just isn't how any of this has ever worked under capitalism.

I want to reiterate that I am NOT okay with the way generative AI is currently trained. That is theft. But regulation is going to change that and generative AI will still be a thing. And it will get better and better and will rely less and less on human editorial intervention.

AI is already EVERYWHERE even though we are focusing on Midjourney and CHatGPT and in many case AI is a boon. Your filters on your phone that make your pictures look better? that's AI. Should you be forced to pay a human to do that, or be forced to learn to do it yourself?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There will absolutely be more Daves. But the world is already full of Daves. Remember "news aggregators" in the early days of the web? Terrible, mindless, worthless sites that still managed to generate tons of traffic and enrich their shady-ass developers. Those weren't made illegal. Why? because that just isn't how any of this has ever worked under capitalism.

I want to reiterate that I am NOT okay with the way generative AI is currently trained. That is theft. But regulation is going to change that and generative AI will still be a thing. And it will get better and better and will rely less and less on human editorial intervention.

AI is already EVERYWHERE even though we are focusing on Midjourney and CHatGPT and in many case AI is a boon. Your filters on your phone that make your pictures look better? that's AI. Should you be forced to pay a human to do that, or be forced to learn to do it yourself?

I don't think anyone is advocating against Google Maps or spell check. (For the record, if an Irish woman wants to ride around my car with me, giving me directions instead of Siri, I'd be open to that discussion.)

When lay people are talking about "AI," they're talking about generative AI, even if they don't know the term.

 

[Storyteller Hero]

Ultimately let the market decide. AI art should have to be labeled as such - both images individually and the product labeled on the dust cover as containing AI art/writing.

Second issue is artists being undercut by AI. That’s a competition element and needs to be looked at the in new ways. Just like digital copies of music and media made us.

AI is not going back in the bottle and banning it will just lead to the folks that do getting left behind.

One of the observed problems in practice, in the example of what happened on Game Dev Market, is that AI-generated images can be mass-produced at a rate and scale that can flood a site so badly, that people have a hard time finding non-AI stuff unless they bookmarked art from before AI generators became available on the market. It goes beyond competition and enters the realm of spam imo, with legitimate artists having their business hurt by AI users, even if just by making it frustrating for potential customers to sift through all the spam to find legitimate art.

AI generators can also potentially reproduce images and logos without filtering them out for copyright and trademark issues. The prompter isn't omniscient so they may not know that they're in for an expensive lawsuit sometime down the line for trying to sell something technically owned by a company that can afford IP lawyers.

There is also the lack of protections for AI images - a troll (at least in the USA) can technically take somebody else's AI-generated cover art, and then use it for their own cover without license or permission. I'm not sure if somebody has done this, but given how humanity never fails to disappoint, there is probably going to be some troll who tries it out. The troll would probably win in a lawsuit for such a case, which could be interesting to see.

 

[Reynard]

When lay people are talking about "AI," they're talking about generative AI, even if they don't know the teterm

In most cases my guess is they don't know what they are talking about and are just responding to very shallow media reports.