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

[gban007]

The ones I know didn't. I don't know the entire history of ENWorld publishing, but I have been following you since 2021 and I would not call you a small creator at any time since then.



The people publishing those products are not going to hire those artists. They don't produce enough volume to do that. ENWorld using AI art might take a job from a starving artist, but a small time creator won't because they were never going to be able to hire that artist anyway.

The only way banning AI from small time creators helps human artists is by eliminating the content from the people who can't afford to hire them and ceding the market to bigger companies .... which is now happening and is exactly what I said would happen on an AI thread a couple years ago.

So your argument you're making is that your prediction years ago about potential bans wasnt about hurting small publishers that were active at the time, but small publishers that were either going to enter the market or change their publishing to make use of AI and scale up?
And so your prediction of what would happen could have also been stuff the people you know could have foreseen, or you could have advised them, not to go down that road?
As now what seems to be the case is going back to pre 2023 sort of scenario, where small players will do just as well as they were doing before, as will big players, so not great shift away from small publishers, just denying them a potential route they thought they could go down by bypassing a cost, ethically or not?
As it stands, like others in this thread, Im glad Foundry is making this change, and think it is good if small publishers are having to exit if they can only publish by using AI generated content.
I would like if Amazon banned AI generated ebooks, rather than seeming to encourage it, as while thousands more books and creators may now be selling, those who dont use AI are harder to find and likely selling less now.

 

[VHawkwinter]

Absolutely no need to go the AI route. I'd argue you'd sell less with AI, because so many people hate it.

I am inclined to agree with you. People hate AI imagery. If they didn't, I might have considered using it for less important pieces. My game-in-progress currently has all work by me and one other person I hired for a few pieces, plus some CC0 textures I modified, and a bit of CC0 floral ornamentation, and I might add in some CC0 nature photography I filtered (the old fashioned way, no AI) to make it look like watercolour. I was planning to buy some 3d models and render them in blender for the places where stock art could be acceptable. You do not need to use AI Image generation, and people do truly hate it.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

I would like if Amazon banned AI generated ebooks, rather than seeming to encourage it, as while thousands more books and creators may now be selling, those who dont use AI are harder to find and likely selling less now.

Vanity publishers have been plaguing my social media feeds on occasion, peddling AI “assisted” solutions to help you get your novel written…and they’ll take care of the marketing for you…of course.

 

[Morrus]

Small time 3rd party creators did not exist in nearly the volume they do now.

Have you heard of the “d20 glut”? I assure you that in the early 2000s there was an avalanche of third party creators using the d20 system to write products for D&D.

Basically, you’re lecturing people about a topic about which you are clearly completely uninformed. Worse, you’re lecturing people who were there at the time.

 

[Morrus]

The ones I know didn't. I don't know the entire history of ENWorld publishing, but I have been following you since 2021 and I would not call you a small creator at any time since then.

Whether you would call ENP a small creator or not is irrelevant—it is.

And I don’t know what 2021 has to do with anything. We’ve been here for 27 years. 24 of those years there was no such thing as LLM platforms.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

You are a human being. The machine is not.

Perhaps you would like to be treated as we treat machines? I am sure there are people who want to treat you like a machine, with no more rights than a toaster.

The results of arguing that there's not much difference between us and machines does not inevitably lead to things being better for us.

This "humans and machines aren't the same" argument is how we eventually get killed by our robot overlords. There will be a day when we will have have forum arguments about whether or not some human created thing is alive.

I don't think there is something fundamental to humanity that means we will always and forever be the only spark of creativity.

Of course I'm speaking more theoretically and we aren't there YET...but we will be having that conversation one day...or our children's children will.

In my personal opinion Andy Warhols soup cans already have shown that stolen and reworked visuals can be considered proper art.

 

[Morrus]

This "humans and machines aren't the same" argument is how we eventually get killed by our robot overlords.

But…. they’re not the same. It’s not an argument, it’s a plain statement of fact.

What an LLM does is not remotely the same process as what a human does.

 

[Waller]

The people publishing those products are not going to hire those artists. They don't produce enough volume to do that. ENWorld using AI art might take a job from a starving artist, but a small time creator won't because they were never going to be able to hire that artist anyway.

That tedious piracy justification is as old as the hills.

Fortunately, I wasn’t going to buy your friends’ AI slop, either. So no loss there.