How Does AI Affect Your Online Shopping?

[Epic Meepo]

That’s not the point. It’s not about what you can afford or even personally desire. It’s about the nature of the product and its value.

Are you referring to the monetary value of a product? I'd argue that non-copyrightable content has no monetary value at all. Intangible assets such as content are only as valuable as society's intellectual property laws allow them to be. If intellectual property laws declare the creator of an AI-generated product isn't due any financial compensation if someone else distributes content they created for free, then the content in question has no inherent monetary value.

That's not to say someone can't add value to non-copyrightable content. If someone prints the content out, the physical book has value as a physical product. If someone hosts the content on a website, the website itself has value as a service provided. But I'd argue the value derives from the good or service itself, not the non-copyrightable content associated with the good or service. If someone wants to pay for a freeware download that comes with tech support, they're paying for the tech support, not the freeware.

If, on the other hand, you're referring to the moral or societal value of non-copyrightable content, then that's a different conversation altogether, one which I haven't yet addressed.

 

[Morrus]

Are you referring to the monetary value of a product?

Are you referring to the monetary value of a product? I'd argue that non-copyrightable content has no monetary value at all. Intangible assets such as content are only as valuable as society's intellectual property laws allow them to be. If intellectual property laws declare the creator of an AI-generated product isn't due any financial compensation if someone else distributes content they created for free, then the content in question has no inherent monetary value.

That's not to say someone can't add value to non-copyrightable content. If someone prints the content out, the physical book has value as a physical product. If someone hosts the content on a website, the website itself has value as a service provided. But I'd argue the value derives from the good or service itself, not the non-copyrightable content associated with the good or service. If someone wants to pay for a freeware download that comes with tech support, they're paying for the tech support, not the freeware.

If, on the other hand, you're referring to the moral or societal value of non-copyrightable content, then that's a different conversation altogether, one which I haven't yet addressed.

I'd argue that non-copyrightable content has no monetary value at all. Intangible assets such as content are only as valuable as society's intellectual property laws allow them to be. If intellectual property laws declare the creator of an AI-generated product isn't due any financial compensation if someone else distributes content they created for free, then the content in question has no inherent monetary value.

That's not to say someone can't add value to non-copyrightable content. If someone prints the content out, the physical book has value as a physical product. If someone hosts the content on a website, the website itself has value as a service provided. But I'd argue the value derives from the good or service itself, not the non-copyrightable content associated with the good or service. If someone wants to pay for a freeware download that comes with tech support, they're paying for the tech support, not the freeware.

If, on the other hand, you're referring to the moral or societal value of non-copyrightable content, then that's a different conversation altogether, one which I haven't yet addressed.

I don’t think I could have been any clearer, but no that is not what I said. But my interest level in the topic just evaporated. It wasn’t that high to begin with, and faced with saying the same thing a third time I’m just gonna nope out.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think, within the gaming-publishing space, the thing will be found to be self-limiting. Yes, at the moment, if you take an individual reader, and individual passages, we can find it hard to tell the difference between genAI content and human-written content.

But, in aggregate, I think the truth will out - on the level of the overall market, I expect a sorting to happen, based on the quality of ideas in the product, rather than upon whether a single paragraph looks like it was written by AI.

This is one of the reasons I suspect AI art is going to end up being more acceptable in RPG books than purely AI text; at least at its current stage, I suspect the latter is going to stand out to a lot more people and in an area which is the priority point in buying a game text.

(Yes, I know some people are very sensitive to AI art. Some of that's legitimate, and some of it is people throwing a lot of false positives, and at least the latter group isn't actually impacting the issue meaninfully because they'll see it where it doesn't exist.)

 

[CleverNickName]

(Yes, I know some people are very sensitive to AI art. Some of that's legitimate, and some of it is people throwing a lot of false positives, and at least the latter group isn't actually impacting the issue meaninfully because they'll see it where it doesn't exist.)

It doesn't help that every time AI-generated images are mentioned in the news, it's for the worst reasons imaginable.

 

[The Firebird]

This holiday season I saw several companies with AI ads. I assume they have big marketing budgets and were able to check if those would alienate many consumers. But then, I might imagine they did the research, and some higher-ups suggested they move forward anyway, anticipating consumers would come around. I don't really know of any data on the matter, but I found it interesting.

 

[Umbran]

I meant it's bad news for the economy in general. A lot of people have invested a lot of money in this stuff, and not just within the gaming industry (TTRPGs, video games, all of it.) But you're right, it's not all bad news. I should try to look on the brighter side.

Ah. Got it.

As I understand it, "products" like books and such, are a minor source of income for those who make genAIs. So, it isn't the public's lack of desire for AI text or images that will sink it.

As I understand it, the bulk of the supposed values comes in turning to Enterprise-class companies, and effectively saying, "We will replace and streamline your operation to the point it can be done with two trained monkeys and a shivering chihuahua. Give us loads of cash, and you will be in business Utopia."

Unfortunately for the tech companies, only about 5% of the Enterprise projects using genAI return even today's more modest value expectations, much less the hundredfold greater amount needed to support the expenditures. While everyone in the business world is hyping AI, companies are soon going to be finding it doesn't save them anything - either the results are so full of errors that the damage business, or they spend just as much time correcting AI work as they'd do doing things with humans.

In the end, it isn't bad PR that's going to kill it. That it doesn't do enough to justify its cost will kill it.

 

[LordEntrails]

Answering for myself, not Morrus, I think you’re missing another option.

I was missing lots of options. Just trying to point out that this is an emotional issue. And it is a complex issue. It deserves to be discussed in a nuanced manner and not an emotional one.

I think that applies to AI use. The problem is, it is very easy to not use AI well, and the most visible examples are of people not using it well. It's possible, in principle, that the technology is fundamentally unable to do art/writing/layout well, although I think we've already seen counterexamples in some of those domains.

Yes, it's very easy to use AI poorly. But, it's also possible to use it for RPGs in a useful and productive manner. Last week I was putting some finishing touches on a module I've been writing and asked Gemini what it could do to help me proof and edit it. It came back with a multi-step process using multiple Google AI tools with specific steps, prompts and things to look out for.

It included some simple grammar errors like it's vs its my editor missed. But it also caught (correctly) a misnamed NPC. i.e. one of the intro NPCs who gives the party a job is named Mr. Johnson, but it cited a paragraph and sentence much later in the story where I referred to the NPC as Mr. Smith.

When prompted to check for structure etc, it came up with a suggestion that one of the plot/location points in my adventure only had one clue leading to it and the party might miss that clue. It was right, I had meant that the path between points 10 and 11 where self-evident and effectively the same, but that wasn't clear in my adventure.

We all have seen adventures from the big publishers miss things like that. Yet in this specific case it made some trivial (but good) suggestions and even what I consider a fairly significant one.

And if I keep that plot improvement, do I list on DriveThru that I used AI to help? I probably should right, but then some segment of the market is closed to me even though I suspect many of those people who would just have AI content filtered out automatically would place me in the same group as those that the entire adventure is written by AI with just cut and paste into a document. Or, do I remove that fix from my module, and publish it with a known error, all becaue AI informed me of the flaw?

Unfortunately for the tech companies, only about 5% of the Enterprise projects using genAI return even today's more modest value expectations, much less the hundredfold greater amount needed to support the expenditures. While everyone in the business world is hyping AI, companies are soon going to be finding it doesn't save them anything - either the results are so full of errors that the damage business, or they spend just as much time correcting AI work as they'd do doing things with humans.

Some businesses will certainly find it doesn't save them anything. But a lot of others, will find that AI is profitable for them. And AI is getting better on an almost weekly basis. I've seen things in the aerospace and defense industry that just were not possible without the current generation of machine learning and what we now call AI. AI is doing positive things in the financial and automotive industries too. And, nefarious actors are using it profitably as well. There are simple too many valuable products that hold a lot of value because of those AI capabilities. For all AI use to stop.

In the end, it isn't bad PR that's going to kill it. That it doesn't do enough to justify its cost will kill it.

Depends upon what "it" is. If you mean AI in the RPG industry and possible even free LLMs and Image gens, maybe. If you mean it as in all AI technologies, then no. There's already evidence of too many positive value use cases.

 

[thirdkingdom]

I was missing lots of options. Just trying to point out that this is an emotional issue. And it is a complex issue. It deserves to be discussed in a nuanced manner and not an emotional one.

Yes, it's very easy to use AI poorly. But, it's also possible to use it for RPGs in a useful and productive manner. Last week I was putting some finishing touches on a module I've been writing and asked Gemini what it could do to help me proof and edit it. It came back with a multi-step process using multiple Google AI tools with specific steps, prompts and things to look out for.

It included some simple grammar errors like it's vs its my editor missed. But it also caught (correctly) a misnamed NPC. i.e. one of the intro NPCs who gives the party a job is named Mr. Johnson, but it cited a paragraph and sentence much later in the story where I referred to the NPC as Mr. Smith.

When prompted to check for structure etc, it came up with a suggestion that one of the plot/location points in my adventure only had one clue leading to it and the party might miss that clue. It was right, I had meant that the path between points 10 and 11 where self-evident and effectively the same, but that wasn't clear in my adventure.

We all have seen adventures from the big publishers miss things like that. Yet in this specific case it made some trivial (but good) suggestions and even what I consider a fairly significant one.

And if I keep that plot improvement, do I list on DriveThru that I used AI to help? I probably should right, but then some segment of the market is closed to me even though I suspect many of those people who would just have AI content filtered out automatically would place me in the same group as those that the entire adventure is written by AI with just cut and paste into a document. Or, do I remove that fix from my module, and publish it with a known error, all becaue AI informed me of the flaw?

Some businesses will certainly find it doesn't save them anything. But a lot of others, will find that AI is profitable for them. And AI is getting better on an almost weekly basis. I've seen things in the aerospace and defense industry that just were not possible without the current generation of machine learning and what we now call AI. AI is doing positive things in the financial and automotive industries too. And, nefarious actors are using it profitably as well. There are simple too many valuable products that hold a lot of value because of those AI capabilities. For all AI use to stop.

Depends upon what "it" is. If you mean AI in the RPG industry and possible even free LLMs and Image gens, maybe. If you mean it as in all AI technologies, then no. There's already evidence of too many positive value use cases.

Drivethru's AI Guidelines very clearly state that yes, you're required to disclose the use of AI tools.

If AI-Generated tools were used for any of the content in your title, you are required to indicate this using the Creation Method > AI-Generated filter.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It doesn't help that every time AI-generated images are mentioned in the news, it's for the worst reasons imaginable.

Well, yes, deepfakes are a different question not really related to AI generated (adjusted or not) artwork (and if someone wants to decide to be some sort of confrontation about that term, don't expect a response). Vocal/visual faking in the public sphere especially is a real problem, but it doesn't directly bear on this.

 

[Umbran]

I was missing lots of options. Just trying to point out that this is an emotional issue. And it is a complex issue. It deserves to be discussed in a nuanced manner and not an emotional one.

If it is an emotional issue, it must be discussed in an emotional manner. Neglecting those emotions will lose the nuance that you insist upon.

Depends upon what "it" is. If you mean AI in the RPG industry and possible even free LLMs and Image gens, maybe. If you mean it as in all AI technologies, then no. There's already evidence of too many positive value use cases.

I mean generative AI, specifically. That does not include what we normally speak of when we reference, "machine learning", and several other technologies. But generative AI is reaching its limits, due to the cost of expansion and its statistical nature.

I will even go so far as to note that generative AI has its valid uses - but replacing human creativity really isn't one of them.