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

[Charlaquin]

Okay, if there's no point in discussion...why are you here? I think everyone understands your position; you've made it very clear.

Because it’s an important subject and people are talking about it. I’m not about to just let the AI fans verbally wank about it together without reminding them of the lives they’re bragging about ruining.

I'm interested in the discussion because I think this is a very nuanced problem, it's not going to go away, and I am trying to get a handle on it professionally. So there is lots of room for discussion. You would not believe how much time has gone into discussing generative AI at my job over the past year, and we are not close to having a solution to the many complex problems it raises.

Oh, there’s absolutely room for discussion about how to solve these problems. What I don’t believe there’s room for discussion on is the question of if it’s theft. As far as I’m concerned, that question has a clear answer, and it’s yes. What we do about that is a much more complicated question.

 

[Scribe]

No it isn't. Horses were not in the workforce to start with, but many other people - trainers, carriage builders, street sweepers, farmers, leatherworkers. They all relied on the horse-driven economy. When Ford started to produce cars, some of those jobs transferred directly (leatherworkers, carriage builders) and the number of those jobs increased dramatically

Do you believe that high paying jobs will be increasing as a result of advancing robotics and AI?

When the cost of living in developed countries is increasing, and housing issues are in the news across NA and Europe?

If AI/Robotics is able to drive down costs, by decreasing wages and benefits due to having less humans needing to be employed, what jobs exactly are people going to be getting paid living wages to perform?

Flip burgers? Pick fruit?

Trades perhaps. Governments like to push down Education salaries so I dont know about that, and the way the curriculums are going now, I'd put my kid in Private school anyway.

This isnt a Horse to Car type scenario in my view, and we are not in a place as a society, where those people that supported a Horse based travel system, could just go and work a farm and still go out and buy a house.

Average cost of a home in Vancouver BC (via quick Google, oh the irony): $1,203,000

'So just go live somewhere cheaper.' Certainly an option for now, but even less desirable places a home is going to be over $300K in Canada. I've looked, and I have a home, because I'm trying to find a way for my son to get ahead without me keeling over and leaving him everything.

So how is AI going to rebuild the middle class or is it just going to accelerate its further erasure?

 

[Lanefan]

Last I checked writers are not pounding things out on typewriters

Almost completely true.

and artists aren't painting canvass,

Very much not true. Paint on canvas is still a very common art technique.

they are using technology and replaced those "old school" creatives and are doing it better and faster.

With art, it very much depends on how specific you want the end image to be.

I mean, if you're just after a generic medieval village scene, odds are good AI can (now or in the near future) bang something out for you that'll do well enough. But if you're looking for a detailed image that incorporates specific elements in exact locations to match with the adventure module you're writing, then AI will let you down big time; and paint on canvas is a whole lot faster of a manual image-creation process than is pixel-by-pixel on a computer.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, because people are far too comfortable with letting themselves think it’s “just a tool” and therefore harmless. People’s actual livelihoods are in jeopardy. Loaded language is absolutely warranted.

As long as it’s trained on work that the artists are not being notified of, let alone compensated for, I don’t believe any use of it is justifiable.

Good, because I don’t believe there is room for discussion. Generative “AI” is art theft. Period.

What about generative non-artificial intelligence - i.e. what I often do when I do music or write words?

I'll come up with a song idea, for example, and think to myself "This would work best if it kinda sounded like [this band] did it" or "I can use [that guy's] vocal tricks and techniques on it" or "I want the same keyboard sound as in [that song]". And so when I record it, that's what I do: it's an original new song, but intended* to sound like a style - or a mix of styles - set by someone else.

Or I'll write some poem words or lyrics, and on reading them over I'll think "That really looks like something [that person] could have wrote, but didn't".

It shouldn't really make a difference that it's a human brain doing this rather than a computer, should it? And if that's theft, then an awful lot of writers and musicians are guilty of it; and that's not reasonable.

* - whether or not it ever in fact meets that intent is a very open question.

 

[Lanefan]

I think even with shallow and formulaic content, it’s still going to require human quality control.

And probably human editing as well, but IME editing, say, an adventure module takes far less time than does writing one from scratch.

 

[Charlaquin]

What about generative non-artificial intelligence - i.e. what I often do when I do music or write words?

(…)

It shouldn't really make a difference that it's a human brain doing this rather than a computer, should it?

It absolutely makes a difference, because you are making creative decisions. That’s not what generative “AI” does. It’s not capable of thinking "This would work best if it kinda sounded like [this band] did it" or "I can use [that guy's] vocal tricks and techniques on it" or "I want the same keyboard sound as in [that song]". All it does is make predictions about what’s most likely to be in a piece that matches the prompt you gave it, based on analysis of a giant database of works most if not all of which it had no legal right to use.

 

[Charlaquin]

And probably human editing as well, but IME editing, say, an adventure module takes far less time than does writing one from scratch.

Nobody said they weren’t convenient.

They’re powerful tools, no doubt, and they have the potential to enhance rather than replace an artist’s work… if they were ethically trained and properly used. But as it currently stands, they’re being trained on stolen art, and used for purposes they’re not actually suited for.

 

[Clint_L]

It absolutely makes a difference, because you are making creative decisions. That’s not what generative “AI” does. It’s not capable of thinking "This would work best if it kinda sounded like [this band] did it" or "I can use [that guy's] vocal tricks and techniques on it" or "I want the same keyboard sound as in [that song]". All it does is make predictions about what’s most likely to be in a piece that matches the prompt you gave it, based on analysis of a giant database of works most if not all of which it had no legal right to use.

Would that it were that simple. Nobody fully understands how generative AI works. And your claims about legal rights are irrelevant; hordes of actual legal professionals are working on this many different aspects of this problem right now, and it will be up to a whole lot of court cases to determine what legal rights exist, along with whatever statutes are passed. And those legal rights will vary in different jurisdictions. Probably in significant ways (for example, consider the different standards for intellectual property rights in, say, China vs. the USA).

Do you have a legal right to read my words right now? After all, you must have made a copy of them on your computer to do so, and I never gave you explicit permission. You didn't pay me or offer me any other compensation. Is it theft? I have posted images of my art on the internet; every time someone viewed those images, they must have made a copy. Theft?

When you memorize lines from a play, did you steal them? What about when you learn to play a song that someone else wrote? What about when you perform it for your friends? What about when you take basic ideas from that and other songs that you have learned over the years but rearrange them in new ways?

No one knows how this will all come out. But I am very, very confident that it will not come out with all generative AI being labeled "theft." Not least because what you are talking about is better described as potential "copyright infringement" and no one is going to be going to jail.

 

[Seramus]

I don’t believe there’s room for discussion on is the question of if it’s theft. As far as I’m concerned, that question has a clear answer, and it’s yes. What we do about that is a much more complicated question.

I wholeheartedly agree it is theft. I also think most human artists do the same thing, albeit at a much slower pace. What interests me is, as AI technology improves to near sapient levels, will it be given the same rights as normal people?

In any case, I imagine AI artists will need to spend years making their own databases for people to judge and vote on, to avoid any accusations of infringement.

 

[Lanefan]

It absolutely makes a difference, because you are making creative decisions. That’s not what generative “AI” does.

Yet.

And when - not if - it can and does, then what?