Kobold Press State of Play Issues “No AI Pledge”

Kobold Press CEO and “Kobold-in-Chief” Wolfgang Baur released a new State of Play post issuing a No AI Pledge. Excerpts from the post (read the full post here):

Both as the Kobold Press CEO and as a game designer, I’m pleased to say that Kobold Press’s policy on AI is simple and direct: We don’t use generative AI art, we don’t use AI to generate text for our game design, and we don’t believe that AI is magical pixie dust that makes your tabletop games better.

[…]

We should be skeptical about AI snake oil. It’s not useless, but it’s also not miraculous. And in some places, it simply doesn’t belong at all.

Your Brain is the Generator

The staff at Kobold Press doesn’t think AI belongs in generating art, roleplaying, or storytelling. Making your game your own is the heart of the RPG hobby: creating your world, your character, and your story with friends. Frankly, we’ve seen LLM text prompts work ok for chatbots. But we play RPGs to play with our friends, not software.

[…]

For game design, we hold the same position. Kobold Press believes in empowering players and game masters with tools (such as the upcoming Encounter Builder tool) that enable your game to run well.

But the emphasis is on your game, not a machine-generated GM or a set of prompts for a design built on LLM training on clear infringement of existing work. The spark of every GM’s creativity doesn’t glow any brighter with AI. None of our game design is generated with AI, and we aim to keep it that way.

The post ends with a sign-up, “If you support Kobold Press in this policy, please feel free to sign below in support.” Since posting on Thursday, over 40 signatures have been added to the statement. This statement comes on the heels of Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks speaking to a Goldan Sach event about the use of “AI” in Dungeons & Dragons last week.

 

[OptionalRule]

We do not user AI and never would.

In other news, buy our book of random tables!

 

[orial]

It’s about the use of AI in ART, same as the WOTC / Cox statement.
That the internet ‘explodes’ about his later statement about the use of AI is because people don’t read, understand and follow clickbait.
The use of AI in tables, random rog events, stories etc etc is np seems me.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

The attached post is actually a quite thoughtful think about how AI is used in RPGs. It's worth a read.

They are against AI-generated art. I understand the gesture here, but I don't think it's feasible. People gonna be people, and will default to the easiest path. AI-generated art will get used; the horse is out of the barn. It might be ugly, but that is the way of humanity. Rail against it if you must, but I think a better approach is to understand its core first.. then work against it (again, if you must).

AI-generated art is a thing. It's easy, and (at the time of writing) makes acceptable, but not great, art. Acceptable for certain, but certainly not all, uses. Whether that thing supplants human-generated art is up to the humans to decide. If someone uses AI-generated art in their, say RPG product, to save a few bucks... joke's on them if they get fewer sales if folks turn against them for using AI-generated art or they lose sales because their art is crappier than their competitor's though.

If you think what you do as an artist is worth protecting, make a case for yourself. Any industry that gets supplanted by a new technology (see car replacing horse & buggy, hitting two stones together replacing waiting for a lightning strike) has to deal with this. If you think that your random job, whose value is randomly determined by the particular point of social evolution your society exists in, has a value that should not be supplanted by an advancement in understanding or technology... let's hear your case. If your case isn't feasible... find something else to do.

I fully understand that there are two sides to this story (trying, almost certainly futilely, to stave off angry mob reaction to this post). I understand that it sucks to have entered a career and become comfortable, and to have that yanked out from under you is awful and feels ridiculous that this has happened to you.

I have been there and have that happened to me, and have had to put in work to change my career path. I'm still doing something I completely enjoy doing, but it was certainly not my first love. But you adapt. Welcome to planet earth. No one owes you a living. Make yourself useful. You live in a society with other human beings. You draw benefits from that. Part of being a member of society is contributing back to society.

But...

Human beings should support those that need help. I mean that is an absolute. Don't let anyone dangle.

But...

If you have a talent and a passion, and you can turn that into a living... AWESOME!!! If you can't... still awesome. It's something you can enjoy and others can enjoy vicariously. It makes the world go round. But if you can't make a living from it... it becomes a hobby. If you absolutely want to make this talent the way you make your living, the onus is on you to make that niche for yourself. If you can't create that niche... find something else to do.

 

[aramis erak]

Kobold's is a bit more "No AI"...
But I suspect several WotC creatives are seeing their careers flash before their eyes given Cox's statements...
Because they have said they don't use AI to generate text, generate art, nor generate rules... and here's Cox saying that WotC is going to be doing so. He's made a liar out of his creatives. He's basically said he plans to replace them, and DM's as well, in search of dollars.
@orial the WotC creatives were quite clear in their opposition to AI art and AI text in D&D rulebooks. Cox is clear he's not up on the law, since he talks about WotC owning the copyrights on the art in quotes from a third party - when the US Copyright Registrar has said the product of generative AI is not protectable content.
Note that as an IP holding US Corporation, that's dispositive and prevents Hasbro from holding Copyrights on AI generated content.
If it's true that there's AI content, Cox just nutted HasBro's IPs. At the very least, risking loss of copyright protection on potentially large chunks of content and/or fraud charges for failure to denote what elements are AI Generated.

AI and Copyright Law in 2023: Federal Government Activities

2023 was an extremely busy year for artificial intelligence (AI). That was especially true for copyright issues related to AI, which sparked several Congressional hearings, a study by the U.S. Copyright Office, and other government

copyrightalliance.org

 

[Von Corellon]

Happy to support this, #42.

 

[mamba]

It’s about the use of AI in ART, same as the WOTC / Cox statement.

no, the Kobolds mentioned text too

The use of AI in tables, random rog events, stories etc etc is np seems me.

and I think the opposite. If some small publisher uses AI art I see no problem with it, but the text should never come from an AI

 

[jerryrice4949]

AI is necessary for some areas. Wouldn’t we expect Hasbro to use AI in video game development? AI is always made out to be so bad but that is a gross over simplification.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

AI is necessary for some areas.

Areas that previously have done just fine without AI? That's not "necessary" in the normal sense.

 

[jerryrice4949]

Video games without good to great AI are trash especially RPG games and sports games.