AI art bans are going to ruin small 3rd party creators

[FrogReaver]

Anything using AI art I automatically dismiss. 3rd party creators are better off using no art at all if they can't afford to pay a real artist. Then I might check their product out.

It’s okay, others will.

 

[dead]

It’s okay, others will.

You are OK with it?

 

[FrogReaver]

You are OK with it?

Okay with what, be specific?

 

[FrogReaver]

But then in 2023 you were right here encouraging people to literally pirate stuff.

Is this link broke, it doesn’t even send me to a post by him?

 

[Swanosaurus]

As far as I am concerned, what's broken is the logic that you have to reproduce the complete production value package of a big company as an indie creator. Do what you're great at, wing the rest or just leave it out if it isn't strictly necessary. Upping the standard to "it must have art that looks like it's from pathfinder, at least at first glance" is what hurts everyone. If you're saying often enugh "... otherwise, no one will buy or even notice it", people will start to believe. I'm convinced it's not that way. People do notice good writing - so put your good writing in the advertising. If you're good at drawing line art, put that on the cover.

Of course, by all means, expand your capabilites and find people to work with. But don't act is if publishing and selling would be impossible without that gaudy AI cover showing dwarf hulk with a big axe. It won't help you to get noticed, anyway; it will just make your product look and feel like something from temu.

 

[soviet]

The selling point of a small indie creator is 'here's my unique vision' rather than 'this is sort of like what everyone else does, but cheaper'. People using AI slop are by definition not creating anything, certainly not anything unique.

 

[Cergorach]

The FVTT team has put up harsher rules on generative AI and LLM for their module database AND the store, but you can still sell FVTT modules with generative AI and LLM content, you just won't be putting it up on the FVTT database and store.

The FVTT team still allow modules that use generative AI, that's prompted by users at the time of creation, essentially UI fronts to generative AI and LLM solutions.

What they also allow is LLM in coding, as long as "Package authors must personally understand and be prepared to maintain all code.", that's difficult to enforce imho. But also not allowing LLM code is currently impossible due to how most programmers are trained, things like code completion also use LLM for example.

My issues here are not the clear rules about AI usage on their ends, my issues are with the unintended consequences. TheRipper93 has been creating FVTT modules before LLM became popular with ChatGPT in 2022, but like most programmers, they use AI powered tools in their workflows. Some of the impacted things are a few AI generated icons that will be changed in the coming months, but the real issue is that they removed all translations except English, because they could not confirm that the people submitting the translations didn't use AI and they have no way to check unless they hire very expensive translators for every language to check everything. The issue here isn't necessarily that someone used AI, but that the one using it doesn't 100% know if they did... Translations can still be used if the one translating makes their own module, something most translators can't actually do themselves, they previously just submitted the translations... Not that I use translations besides English, but a LOT of folks in the world do. But that's not the issue that's going to impact me, imagine how many modules there are, how many languages there are, now imagine that ever one of them requires an additional module for each language for each module. The FVTT database is going to be incredibly polluted with translation modules. That is already the case to a certain extend due to how certain developers work (or don't with translations), but this is going to explode.

I find it insane that the FVTT developers prioritize a non-AI label over adding labels for translations, etc. and means to filter out certain results already.

And yes, modules not on the FVTT store and not in the database are going to be more difficult to find for customers, but already there are modules not in the FVTT store and/or not in the database that people still find use and buy. That is not going to change.

Original post from Discord:

Foundry Virtual Tabletop - AI Content Policy - Effective March 18, 2026​

Hello @everyone, I have some important news to share with you all. We have created and instituted a new AI Content Policy that governs usage of generative AI for packages featured on the Home | Foundry Virtual Tabletop website and on our official FoundryVTT.store - Your Marketplace for Foundry VTT marketplace.The need for such a policy has been evident to us for some time, but aligning on exactly what our policy should be and how logistically to deploy it has been a major challenge. Our team worked hard to achieve consensus and clarity on what to do. For some of you, this policy will be welcome; reinforcing your own values or providing clarity around acceptable usage. For some of you, this policy will be frustrating or damaging to the way that you would prefer to operate. The environment we find ourselves in is one in which there are no universally winning moves - regardless of which camp you fall into I hope you can acknowledge the effort and thought that has gone into articulating our stance.

Summary​

You should read the policy for full details on what AI-generated content can and cannot be included in a module or system, but the basics are these:

• Prepared content must be human-made. Text, images, audio, and marketing materials that are intentionally pre-created must originate from human creative work. AI tools may provide limited assistance with editing or post-processing.
• Improvised content may be AI-generated. Content generated at runtime in direct response to end-user prompts is permitted. We do not police what users choose to generate at their own table.
• Software code may be AI generated with specific conditions. Package authors must personally understand and be prepared to maintain all code. Packages that generate software code at runtime must obtain user acknowledgement and consent for that code to be executable.
• Packages can be designated as "Zero AI". Packages that exclusively contain user-facing content developed entirely without use of AI tools may designate that package as "Zero AI", advertising their work as 100% human created.
• Non-compliant packages will be archived or deleted. Existing packages need to become compliant with this policy within 180 days. Newly submitted packages must be immediately compliant with this policy. Packages which are not compliant will be archived or deleted from our website and marketplace listings.

Discussion​

Discussion about this policy should occur in the ⁠ai-content-policychannel. A reminder of ground rules that we expect everyone to be courteous. Those of you who might celebrate this change should please do so respectfully of the fact that other members of this community are going to be hurt by this direction. Those of you who are negatively impacted by this policy should please be considerate of the fact that clearly articulated ground rules for permitted usage is something our community and creators have been asking for.

Thank You​

We have done the best job we could in constructing this policy. It is not perfect, but the nature of this problem is one for which no perfect solutions exist. Thank you for your kindness and support as we take this necessary step for our team and our business.Andrew and the Foundry Virtual Tabletop team

 

[Staffan]

This is not some hypothetical, I know real living people who will lose their livelihood over this. Meanwhile everything Hasbro/WOTC will stay.

If your business model can't support paying people for their labor, you shouldn't be in business.

It's one thing to use AI art for your home game. I see that as roughly equivalent to using celebrity headshots for various characters ("the Dean of Arts is played by David Selby"). But just like I wouldn't publish a book where the Dean of Arts has a picture of David Selby next to his writeup, I wouldn't publish a book using AI art.

 

[Morrus]

Just to note that the moderators here are currently discussing an AI policy going forward. So far we don't really have one, other than making our ethical issues with it repeatedly clear in the many, many threads about AI, but after somebody literally replied to me using AI recently, we realised we needed one. We'll have more on that very soon.

 

[Morrus]

If your business model can't support paying people for their labor, you shouldn't be in business.

Absolutely. If you can only stay in business by exploiting people, your business is not viable.