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

[Clint_L]

Talent is a myth. What looks like talent is mostly the result of hard work and practice. Some people take to some endeavors faster or slower than others, but nobody is inherently good at anything.

I don't agree. I do think that hard work is the most important thing. But I also know that, however hard I work, I could never be as good as my cousin, a very talented and successful musician. Even when we were kids, he could pick up any instrument and play a tune on it almost instantly. I don't have anything like that facility, and I don't think it can be taught.

My spouse is amazing at martial arts, far beyond my best potential. Similarly, we've climbed together for decades. They are just better than me.

Or, relative to a thread over on another forum, I have put in many, many hours painting miniatures, since I was around 13. And I am fairly solid at it. But there are guys there who are so much better that I'm not even in the same ballpark.

On the other hand, learning how to play and run games? I'm very, very good at that, much better than most people, even among those who put in similar time.

Hard work will take you a long way, no argument. But all else being equal, natural talent matters.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't agree. I do think that hard work is the most important thing.

That’s funny, I actually don’t think hard work is the most important thing, at least not in most cases. But I do think it’s always a necessary component.

But I also know that, however hard I work, I could never be as good as my cousin, a very talented and successful musician. Even when we were kids, he could pick up any instrument and play a tune on it almost instantly. I don't have anything like that facility, and I don't think it can be taught.

I doubt that your cousin had this ability as an infant. He gained it, through hard work and practice. Now, it sounds like your cousin is probably a very fast learner when it comes to learning instruments, and you are not as fast of one. Likely, if you and he put in the same amount of effort in a musical endeavor, he would get much better results. That doesn’t mean you could never become an excellent musician, or that he could have done so effortlessly.

My spouse is amazing at martial arts, far beyond my best potential. Similarly, we've climbed together for decades. They are just better than me.

Again, they might take to it better than you due to some combination of genetic and environmental factors. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t ever get good at martial arts or they got as good as they are without having to work at it.

Or, relative to a thread over on another forum, I have put in many, many hours painting miniatures, since I was around 13. And I am fairly solid at it. But there are guys there who are so much better that I'm not even in the same ballpark.

Of course there are. And I’m sure the majority of people you would categorize as in a different ballpark than you also have other painters who are that much better than they are. There’s always a bigger fish. But none of them got as good as they are without putting time and effort into it. And, theoretically there’s no reason you couldn’t learn to be as good as they are. It would likely take a great deal of time and dedication, which you may not have, or may not want to spend on such a pursuit. But in theory, it is entirely possible.

On the other hand, learning how to play and run games? I'm very, very good at that, much better than most people, even among those who put in similar time.

Sure. No argument here.

Hard work will take you a long way, no argument. But all else being equal, natural talent matters.

“All else being equal” is doing a lot of work here. All else is almost never equal.

 

[mamba]

Why? Because humans have souls and machines do not? Because People are People?

Sure, procedural generation is not mechanically identical to how people learn.

you did find the right answer on your third try

In my uneducated and ignorant way, procedural generation seems a lot like how my untalented self would create an image.

that does not make you correct, it however does mean you should not hold a strong position on something you know next to nothing about and maybe look into it quite a bit before doing so. Dunning Kruger is a thing.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

As I have said LLM'S have uses, I just can't fathom how they can be legally or ethically used to create commercial products, nor can I understand why anyone would pay a company for something they could just have a LLM make for them without paying WotC for asking the LLM for them

While I can readily imagine an ethical system that would make AI wrong to people who adhere to it, I really don't understand why you can't fathom a legal system for AI to function.

1. Have a law that explicitely do not include "AI training" among the thing an IP holder can allow or disallow, including it in the already long list of exceptions (or, depending on how the law is written in the country we consider, don't include it in the limitative rights exclusively given to the author). Several countries already did, so it's easy to see how they did it.

2. As an editor, ensure that the images you select from AI to include in your end product aren't close enough of an existing artwork to infringe on this particular piece's copyright -- the same they already do when accepting a commissioned work.

With regard to whether one should pay for, well, have WotC ask the LLM for them, I'd say I wouldn't pay, since I can do it myself. But several people are happy to send money to WotC for taking the pain of (hiring an author, hiring an illustrator, print the book), all steps they could conceivably do themselves. So there are people willing to pay for the convenience of not doing it themselves and doing the quality control over the end result. I don't think people would be willing to pay the same price as they do now if there is an easy way to do this at home, but I am not sure 100% of people would stop buying AI products either. Some people are right now willingly buying AI-made novels on Amazon, despite being able to generate them at home already.

 

[Lanefan]

If a vocalist is using autotune, it's because they are choosing to do so. Musicians choose to use electric instruments.

Artists and writers did not consent to let other people use their creations to train their AI.

Also, your use of assistive technology here is very incorrect. People don't play electric keyboards because they physically can't play regular ones. They play them because they prefer the sound capabilities of an electric keyboard, or because they like that they're usually portable, or because they can wear headphones when playing, or for any number of reasons like that.

Yes, and all of those are technology assisting the keyboard player in doing things he-she can't otherwise do.

Physical (dis)ability isn't what I'm talking about. I dreamed up the term "assistive technology" while typing the post you quoted, to explain the concept I was getting at. If it's already in use as a specific term for something I was until now unaware of such.

AI is not an assistive device. It doesn't help you accomplish anything. It instead does it for you.

I'm no artist, thus if AI creates a piece of art which I can then go in and tweak-edit-mash into what I want, it has most certainly assisted me in doing something I couldn't otherwise do.

 

[Art Waring]

Sure, maybe the one you created yourself if worth thousands of more than the AI one, but that's your value system, not everyone's.

Hey dude, I would appreciate it if you could refrain from putting words in my mouth.

What I said is simple: Folks have a choice with what to do with their time. Spend it wisely.

I never placed any monetary "value" on art in my previous statement, as the emphasis of the post was on appreciating what little time you have on this earth (but I guess you glossed over that part).

 

[Lanefan]

Going by what I saw on that link to see if your book was scraped, DC Comics definitely has been, and I imagine Marvel Comics also has been. (My dad's a writer, he writes comics, among other things, some of his comics were listed.) It's possible that Warner Bros. and Disney don't care that much about the comics side of things, since none of them are as big sellers as the movies are. Or maybe there's something going on behind the scenes we haven't heard about.

It's also possible that movie companies like WB and Disney simply don't allow their written scripts and screenplays to be put online in any form; and if they ain't online, they can't be scraped.

I'm also not sure if scrapers can gather data from videos (or movies) yet or whether it's all from single images.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

An artist copying another artist is illegal as is other copying ie t-shirts and logos without express permission and or licensing.

Not necessarily. While there are countries where your assertion is right (for example, in the US), it is not the case everywhere. In countries that recognize the right to copy for private use, an artist can 100% paint a copy of Frozen's poster to hang in his own home or on a t-shirt to wear at home. What would be forbidden would be displaying it to others or selling it, not the act of copying.

When it comes to commercial uses the exceptions are all but non-existent, LLM's are commercial in the realm we are discussing them here as such the deserve to be held to the same standards as other commercial use cases are.

Within the confine of the thread pertaining to WotC using them, maybe. But LLMs themselves can be non-commercial. Many of the best models are. Should we understand that all the ethical objection to AI is only for "paid use of the end product" and it doesn't matter for other uses? By which I mean not only private, but also academic or non profit?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I'm also not sure if scrapers can gather data from videos (or movies) yet or whether it's all from single images.

There are video models for AI, so I guess they were trained on existing video footage. As of now, you can get an OK-ish result by submitting a starting frame and an end frame to generate a short video on a gaming computer in a reasonable amount of time -- and the first models to do it just appeared like, 6 months ago. It is a field that is especially interesting for big IP companies in the movie field: if the tech progresses enough that they can use more computation-intensive models to create professional-quality footage, they may be able to reduce greatly their animation and VFX costs. And since they own massive amount of films already, more than enough to train a model on, there won't be an ethical ground to criticize their models.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Those aren't the same.

They are. What we judge is the end result, not the process. If you sell a copy of Elsa from Frozen you made with a pen, a brush, a photocopier, an AI or pray for a divine intervention to make the picture pop into existence, you're guilty. If you use something that isn't recognizable as something pre-existing, you're innocent. How you ended up getting the result infringing on someone's right is irrelevant in the eyes of copyright.