WotC Would you buy WotC products produced or enhanced with AI?

[Burnside]

I tied myself in knots trying to answer this, due I think to the fact that my answer doesn't matter. I don't like the idea of AI-generated writing or art and my inclination is not to support it. However, it is happening, and will continue to happen, regardless of what I want. I don't think the AI genie is going back in the bottle regardless of whether we like the genie or not.

As somebody who writes professionally for a living, I'm pretty much now just hoping I can somehow make it to retirement age before the genie eats my job. I already know that somebody coming out of college right now is very, very unlikely to be able to enjoy the career I've had as a writer.

 

[Incenjucar]

The only useful thing for GenAI to be doing is to help search the older books and settings bibles for data. "Help me find all references to Elminster in a comedic context" "list all the classes that use animated objects" etc.

There would be a lot of value in having a program that simulates combat for balancing purposes, but GenAI is inherently bad at complex math.

An experienced game designer with a strong cup of coffee can come up with an original idea faster than someone can type out a prompt and their heads will be flooding with ideas in seconds and if it's any good they'll be struggling to turn off the tap for at least as long as the coffee lasts.

 

[Reynard]

On thing about AI art: as it has improved, it has gotten a lot less interesting to me. When it was weird and spat out odd things and did not know what to do with the word "centaur" or "hands" it was at least compelling in a grotesque way. Now it is just bland, bad art that literally looks like everything else on the internet.

AI's surrealism phase was much better.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

On thing about AI art: as it has improved, it has gotten a lot less interesting to me. When it was weird and spat out odd things and did not know what to do with the word "centaur" or "hands" it was at least compelling in a grotesque way. Now it is just bland, bad art that literally looks like everything else on the internet.

AI's surrealism phase was much better.

Yes, I agree. Same with writing. It was interesting when it produced weirdness no human would. Now it just produces unimaginative cliche dullness.

 

[Sulicius]

I imagine that an AI could potentially make "perfect" proportions, based on scientific data as to what perfect proportions are.

But the result would almost certainly fall into the Uncanny Valley due to its perfection, because AI doesn't actually know what it's doing.

There is no scientific data to draw from for this. Don’t we all know there is no such thing as perfect proportions anyway?

This whole subject creeps me out.

 

[Sulicius]

I tied myself in knots trying to answer this, due I think to the fact that my answer doesn't matter. I don't like the idea of AI-generated writing or art and my inclination is not to support it. However, it is happening, and will continue to happen, regardless of what I want. I don't think the AI genie is going back in the bottle regardless of whether we like the genie or not.

As somebody who writes professionally for a living, I'm pretty much now just hoping I can somehow make it to retirement age before the genie eats my job. I already know that somebody coming out of college right now is very, very unlikely to be able to enjoy the career I've had as a writer.

I think you do matter! If anything, this poll has showed me that we are united

 

[Reynard]

There is no scientific data to draw from for this.

This is not true. there have been a number of studies that show that despite cultural preferences about size, proportions are remarkable consistent across cultures. it is probably hard coded in in the same way that clear skin and good teeth being attractive are.

 

[Burnside]

I think you do matter! If anything, this poll has showed me that we are united

This site skews towards people who care about stuff like this, though. And even here, there's some support for AI TTRPG products.

Many of us are also the sort of people who can afford not to shop at Amazon/Wal-Mart/Target, etc on moral grounds (although tons of folks here don't think twice about getting their D&D books from Amazon for $25 even if it kills their local FLGS/bookstore - if they even have one left at this point).

There's a lot of "Sure, I'd love to do the right thing if it costs me exactly the same as doing the wrong thing." But the wrong thing is usually 20-40% cheaper, and for most people that's what the decision is based on.

 

[The Firebird]

OK, sure.

Now why should I buy this person's AI product when I can use AI to do the exact same thing?

I mean, seriously, what am I paying for? More importantly, what am I paying him for? He didn't do anything but stick some text in a textbox and click a button. Anyone can do that. Lots of people have haphazard notes for a campaign, after all. If anything, I should pay the AI, because it did the work. (Except the AI isn't actually a sapient being.)

This hypothetical example wouldn't be worth more than maybe a dollar or two if the actual campaign idea was particularly innovative, because that would be the only part that was actually created by a person. The art and actual text would all be fake AI slop.

One example. I have a friend who has spent hundreds of hours on a campaign setting. He has original maps for every city there, extensive notes for encounters, questlines, lore. But it's all handwritten or hand drawn in his notebooks, not digitized, and not accessible to anyone else.

Typing these up and formatting them properly would be a massive value add. He's considered doing it but finds the amount of work daunting, given the other things going on with his life right now.

AI could make self-publishing this kind of thing way easier.

The only useful thing for GenAI to be doing is to help search the older books and settings bibles for data. "Help me find all references to Elminster in a comedic context" "list all the classes that use animated objects" etc.

There would be a lot of value in having a program that simulates combat for balancing purposes, but GenAI is inherently bad at complex math.

An experienced game designer with a strong cup of coffee can come up with an original idea faster than someone can type out a prompt and their heads will be flooding with ideas in seconds and if it's any good they'll be struggling to turn off the tap for at least as long as the coffee lasts.

GenAI is bad at generating math but good at generating code. The trick for math is to make it output code which does the math and then make it run that code.

For example, here is a straightforward combat. The quality of the code is not very good at this point...but I also ran this without detailed instructions.

At the moment you still probably need to read and understand code to make good use of this. But the reliability is increasing pretty rapidly.

 

[Charlaquin]

Same. Before I knew better, I used AI art in two products. I went in and deleted it all.... I'm not supporting thieves if I can help it.

Understandable. When the AI image generators first started showing up, a lot of us were excited about them, before we fully realized the implications of how they had to be “trained.”

Not to mention the environmental damage.

Yeah that’s also a huge issue that I don’t think gets discussed enough.