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

[Sacrosanct]

I fiddled with midjourney in a purely casual, non-commercial way for a couple months and often wondered how long before it just started training on itself and became a recursive hot tween elf generator.

I spent months entering prompts of "Hot tween elves."

 

[Storyteller Hero]

I don't think it's possible. We have no evidence of any other technological innovation regulated to a degree that it actually stopped an industry from being disrupted by it.

There's a difference between being impossible to stop disruption and reducing the impact of disruption. It's not a situation of yes or no, but how far on a scale of 1-10. That's why there is pushback now, before it's too late to make even a small difference.

 

[J.Quondam]

If they let it see Tumblr or DeviantArt, it was already pretty far down that road. (Also, cartoon animals with truly enormous sexual organs.)

I guess the benefit is that when these sinister AIs become sentient,* they'll be so utterly confused by reality that they won't be able to take over the world.

* And the techbros assure us the sinister AIs will become sentient! Which is why it's absolutely imperative that we as a society give them billions of dollars in venture capital instead of focusing on real problems like climate change, housing affordability, and other boring crises.

 

[Lanefan]

Folks who wish to retain copyright over the idea of their products (not everyone by a long shot) will have to get much savvier about how they publish things.

This.

If you want to keep your copyright intact, do not - and do not allow anyone else to - publish or post your IP anywhere on the internet.

Once something's online it's pretty much public domain no matter what the lawyers say.

 

[Reynard]

Digital photography and associated editing suites still require actual work from a human being, often taking a long time to truly master.

AI-generated images are created by a non-human set of algorithms with low effort text prompts, and can be mass-produced at a huge rate. The actual human work involved was to sell the generator itself rather than the images, and prompters entering the asset market largely didn't even participate in the making of the generator.

As such, it's a false equivalence.

So it is about effort. How do you feel about DJs?

 

[humble minion]

If you want to keep your copyright intact, do not - and do not allow anyone else to - publish or post your IP anywhere on the internet.

And that is grossly disruptive in itself, especially for freelance artists looking for commissions (which is a huuuuge percentage of artists). If I'm looking to hire an artist these days, the first, second, and third way I'm going to find one is to look at their folios and sample art on the internet.

 

[Reynard]

But this is hardly a dynamic limited to art, of course. If people en masse rejected products made in exploitative sweatshops in autocratic countries, capitalism would look a lot different to what it does now. But this requires a) that a critical mass of consumers can recognise the product's questionable origin, and b) that a critical mass of consumers have the financial means to choose something more expensive instead, before c) that a critical mass of consumers choose to do so, even comes into play.

I like this because the vast majority of folks calling AI exploitive are doing so on devices manufactured by slaves-in-all-but-name.

That's not to deride people for not being stalwart enough in their beliefs. It's to point out the basic truth that like all concerns over how the modern world operates and propagates, this too will be forgotten once it becomes The Way Things Are. There just aren't enough people who care enough to stand against the tide.

Hell, if we can't come together to solve an actual existential threat like climate change because of the power of capitalism, we sure aren't going to do so to preserve art jobs in the rpg industry.

 

[Lanefan]

And that is grossly disruptive in itself, especially for freelance artists looking for commissions (which is a huuuuge percentage of artists). If I'm looking to hire an artist these days, the first, second, and third way I'm going to find one is to look at their folios and sample art on the internet.

Instead of going down to your local arts collective and making some inquiries in person?

 

[theCourier]

I like this because the vast majority of folks calling AI exploitive are doing so on devices manufactured by slaves-in-all-but-name.

That's not to deride people for not being stalwart enough in their beliefs. It's to point out the basic truth that like all concerns over how the modern world operates and propagates, this too will be forgotten once it becomes The Way Things Are. There just aren't enough people who care enough to stand against the tide.

Hell, if we can't come together to solve an actual existential threat like climate change because of the power of capitalism, we sure aren't going to do so to preserve art jobs in the rpg industry.

Oh man, you really got us there.

Well, there's no use in trying to solve any problem if we can't solve the biggest problem, everyone let's get back to creating even more problems! Woo, defeatist attitudes!

 

[Reynard]

Instead of going down to your local arts collective and making some inquiries in person?

Assuming you have such a thing? Like it or not, social media and the internet is how people find such things these days. If members of your local arts collective are looking for commissions and aren't on Facebook, Instagram and Deviant, that's on them.