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

[Jfdlsjfd]

Leaving the ethics (piracy) out of a discussion about LLM's aka "ai" is like discussing which deadly poisons taste the best.
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These "ai" tools are based on bad faith and in many cases illegal methodology, ignoring that should end the discussion. The ends justify the means, and greater good arguments are a poor platform to debate topics like this.

If you want to have an ethical debate, dismissing all ethical arguments based on the greater good from the get go, despite them being the basis of many ethical systems, sounds like... not wanting to have an ethical debate. Especially when copyright itself was created based on a greater good argument. So your premises should end the ethical discussion as well.

 

[The Firebird]

Now, people love to say the Luddites had it wrong, but they didnt. Those people starved, as their livelihoods were destroyed and the factory owners and government (follow the $) vilified them.

Its more complicated than that, surely? Automation has a bad effect on the people it is competing with directly. But 200 years down the line we are all better off for it.

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

The OP specified the Bigby's art as an example, where it was designed by a human but had the details filled in with AI. I think the design is clearly something that the average user can't do, or can't do as well.

For one thing, we create things to replace human labor, in large part, so that people would have to engage in creative endeavors.

I think some of the disconnect is that you are viewing art as the primary creative endeavor, when for a lot of people it is an add-on. Many rpg users are primarily expressing themselves creatively through the text, through the world they create, etc., not through the art they include. They probably don't have any art at all, or art that doesn't fit their ideas or their setting. In these cases, AI is assisting people in their creative endeavors.

That's another bad thing about AI: you're using it as an alternative to actually learn and improve. AI doesn't teach you any skills. It doesn't make you a better or more creative artist or writer. Which means that if you start out mediocre, you're going to continue to be mediocre, because you will never learn to be good by using it. If you start out crappy, you'll continue to be crappy. You'll never even learn to be as good as mediocre.

Is that what you want the future of gaming to be?

Regarding both this and the previous statement, I think we need to apply the 'procgen map litmus test'. Having a program output a medium quality map that fits my ideas is helping my creativity, not preventing it. And it is ok that I'm not getting better at mapmaking, because the goal of my activity is not to become a good mapmaker.

Also, I'm pretty sure that most farmers are OK with tractors replacing their labor, and most families are OK with laundry machines replacing their labor, and so on. How many actual artists and writers are OK with AI replacing them?

Not everyone celebrates inventions that save tedious labor. See, Luddites.

 

[Desdichado]

Probably not. It's not a deal-breaker. But given that most WotC is already poorly conceived corporate slop anyway, having AI do it hardly seems likely to be very noticeably worse.

 

[Ramhorn]

That'd be a "Probably Not" for me. I just don't place value in something that's generated, especially when it comes down to art and lore. In a game where most of what's taking place is conceptual and abstract, I don't find it to be useful for people.

The exception is those who don't mind parts of their worldbuilding or character lore being automated, but at that point you're trading carefully planned and crafted adventures or modules for expedience. Even procedural generation for something like maps is trying your luck, AI tends to be a lot more aberrant in it's results.

 

[Scribe]

Its more complicated than that, surely?

Not really.

How many art classes full of new students are going to put out images like this? How long do you think it would take them?

Now, imagine you have the capacity to create 4 (or 10, or 100) every 10 seconds, and the quality from today to tomorrow, only improves.

It doesnt need to take a break, it doesnt stop, and most importantly, it doesnt even need to get paid.

This isnt the Calculator we are talking about folks.

 

[Incenjucar]

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.

YouTube and other online video providers scrape videos they host. To protect art from scraping you have to keep it locked away from the world entirely.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

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.

It is a poisoned well, all of your what ifs will not change the foundation it is built on.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

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.



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?

WotC and I both are in the US

I have stated multiple times there are valid benefits of the software, and also what you do in private is between you and whomever you choose to play with just like any other easily available pirated content.

The software is built on theft, nothing will change that, if you're OK with it, use it. I will not knowingly or voluntarily use it because of how they chose to use stolen content to make it.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

If you want to have an ethical debate, dismissing all ethical arguments based on the greater good from the get go, despite them being the basis of many ethical systems, sounds like... not wanting to have an ethical debate. Especially when copyright itself was created based on a greater good argument. So your premises should end the ethical discussion as well.

If your going to constantly move the goalposts it is going to be difficult to have a discussion with you.

Enjoy using a tool based on theft, I am done trying to have a discussion with someone that just wants to argue.

 

[nyvinter]

I remember seeing how Midjourney had to stop accepting "afghan" an an input because when it was used, it only output images with that looked like variation of the Afghan Girl photo.

And that has continued. So that whole "it doesn't copy" has a huge "*) except when it does" attached to it.