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

[The Firebird]

Sure, walkn into your FLGS, find the info you need, put it back and don't contribute to keeping the shop open.

Oh wait...

If I use a book regularly enough to know what info I need I'll buy it.

 

[CleverNickName]

I think the next level of example is "could I get the same amount of use with a library book". For me, in that case I think the use of a pdf is fine.

Digital content is held to a different standard because it is nonrival.

Your way of thinking is, of course, your own. You can and should hold to it as best you can. And it's not my place to tell you what to think, or what choices you should make. I'm just a cartoon character on the Internet, ya know?

Anyway, it's pretty clear that you and I have fundamentally different ways of thinking on this topic, and so here is where we part ways.

 

[Faolyn]

That's not really accurate to how LLMs work. You can't ask Claude to write Dune.

But the people who use it can. And if you follow the link I added, people have used it to re-write other people's works and sell them.

 

[Scribe]

If I use a book regularly enough to know what info I need I'll buy it.

Sure man, you do you.

When it comes to what this thread is still kinda sorta about? I'll support people, who want to make a decent enough living to put food on their table, maybe even have some kids, to you know, pretend we still have a functional society.

 

[Faolyn]

The discussion we had was about AI product, not replication of an exact existing text. Regurgitating the ideas of a book is perfectly legal, without AI you can do it by hand, as ideas are outside the scope of intellectual property, it's the form the idea takes that is protected.

And it's morally and ethically wrong to do so if you claim it as your own work.

And you'd get IP rights over your work, even if it was as obviously uninspired as a story about schoolchildren in a magical UK public school fighting a returning undead wizard, or a teenage romance between a werewolf and a vampire.

I fail to see what that has to do with creating AI using material obtained from other people's work and then selling it.

I was answering @The Firebird's post comparing looking at a few pages of a book in a library and downloading a book from a website to check a few pages. It was a side discussion from AI, and I don't see anything that refered to AI in this post. So your accusation of whataboutism seems odd.

Sigh.

No, it is a whataboutism.

Let me give you an example: One of my friends has said that they have an idea for a game based on the Persona series. They told us about it (several of us haven't played the game or watched the anime), showed up video clips, sent us links, etc. We're in the process of coming up with character ideas for it now.

What they did not do is say "I have an idea for a game" and pretend that they came up with all the Persona concepts all by themself.

I could read a book or see a movie or view a piece of art, come up with an idea, and then use it to create a campaign idea, but I'm not going to say I came up with it 100% by myself. I'll say "I drew some inspiration from XYZ."

You seem to be living in a happy fantasy land whee everyone who plays with AI is simply going to use it for free stuff, or will be have to give it away for free. But in reality, people are using AI to actively steal other people's material and then sell it while claiming it as their own. And you are saying "hey, it's legal so it's cool."

No. It's not cool.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Sigh.

No, it is a whataboutism.

Let me give you an example: One of my friends has said that they have an idea for a game based on the Persona series. They told us about it (several of us haven't played the game or watched the anime), showed up video clips, sent us links, etc. We're in the process of coming up with character ideas for it now.

What they did not do is say "I have an idea for a game" and pretend that they came up with all the Persona concepts all by themself.

I could read a book or see a movie or view a piece of art, come up with an idea, and then use it to create a campaign idea, but I'm not going to say I came up with it 100% by myself. I'll say "I drew some inspiration from XYZ."

You seem to be living in a happy fantasy land whee everyone who plays with AI is simply going to use it for free stuff, or will be have to give it away for free. But in reality, people are using AI to actively steal other people's material and then sell it while claiming it as their own. And you are saying "hey, it's legal so it's cool."

No. It's not cool.

Can you explain what your entire answer above has to do with me saying that technically, reading a book in a bookshop before buying it can be forbidden, which has nothing to do with AI, but was part of a discussion on how to assess if a book is worth buying?

 

[Faolyn]

Did any of the original authors or artists agree to it?

Well, in cases like this it was mostly contract work or one-offs where TSR/WotC legitimately owns the material, so it's a bit of a weird area.

But personally, if they were to produce a book using material 100% taken from their own archives and nowhere else, I'd at least want those original creators given credit in some way. Which won't happen simply because there's far too many of them.

 

[Faolyn]

Can you explain what your entire answers has to do with me saying that technically, reading a book in a library can be forbidden, which has nothing to do with AI?

Reading a book in a library isn't forbidden because the book was specifically purchased so that you can read it. You can even draw inspiration from it. What you can't do is take the book, put a new cover on it that has your name on it, and claim you wrote it.

 

[Scott Christian]

What if they wrote a section of a rule book, fed it into AI, and asked it to write it with better clarity? Would that prevent people from buying the product?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Reading a book in a library isn't forbidden because the book was specifically purchased so that you can read it. You can even draw inspiration from it. What you can't do is take the book, put a new cover on it that has your name on it, and claim you wrote it.

I used library but wanted to type bookshop. There was no implication that anyone would draw information from it, or copy it, or anything. It was just The Firebird asking a question about sampling content to determine whether a content is useful. Honestly, I don't see how you could make a link between this side discussion about sampling content and AI. Accusing us of being off-topic may be fair (but frankly the whole discussion about ethics is already off-topic if you consider the parameters of the OP), but whataboutism? You're trying to imply a link between two discussions that had nothing to do with each other.