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.

 

[jpmg90]

we managed just fine without it for the last 2000 years, so calling it necessary seems to be an overstatement

@mamba as @Ulorian - Agent of Chaos put it in their post it's not just 'was it necessary' it's 'is it necessary in modern society'. Would you consider cars, tractor trailers hauling freight around the world and airplanes 'necessary?' As Ulorian motioned, horse and buggies are only a niche thing now, there are places where you can have a business for it, but if your goal for your business is supplying transportation, then you're better off with motor vehicles.

There will always be artists, game designers and creatives. AI wont change that, however the extent at which those things will be niche, few and far between professions where only the top 5-10 percent are actually viable as a career has remained to be see.

People seem perfectly fine when an actor is updated with CGI or other tech to make them younger, look as though they're doing stunts, etc. Companies like Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) went from creating models, animatronics, etc. to now utilizing mostly digital art. In the past they had to create huge models, complex animatronics, and animators had to animate very frame (similar to cel animation back in early cartoons). But those would take hours to create. Then as the tools got better, the amount of time spent animating each cel or frame lessened, they could move poses and it would transition frame by frame for them, etc.

Society and the consumers will determine how far things will go.

Could Warner Bros. put out an AI Cartoon service that uses all their old Looney Tunes cartoons as inputs and allow users to input which characters doing which things and have the AI create a 3-5 minute cartoon for that users, completely unique to that interaction. Would they use that tool internally, tweak any 'weirdness' and be generating hundreds of cartoons when previously the same amount of time they created 1? Then would their competitors find it 'necessary' to do the same to remain profitable in their market?

Sure there are still some entertainment that utilize older tech, and you notice it and typically when done well it's with great acclaim, but they don't have the same profitability, they take longer, etc.

It's handcrafted vs factory made, There will always (hopefully) be people out there, doing the fully traditional 'craft' that the fans will enjoy, but there is also the market for the 'cheap and efficient' option. [Especially when cheap and efficient DOES NOT EQUAL poor quality]

 

[mamba]

Society and the consumers will determine how far things will go.

the consumer has very little say in this, it will be oligarchs and lobbyists

 

[jpmg90]

the consumer has very little say in this, it will be oligarchs and lobbyists

Okay, yeah so the 'companies' / "oligarchs and lobbyists" as you say will decide whether or not their business will pursue those actions, but it will be up to the consumers to determine if there is market for it and whether it is profitable.

In the current state of the world, your wallet is your voting power. So if you don't agree with something, or if you value the 'handcrafted' entertainment, put your money where your mouth is, push for it and if the 'masses' agree they will do the same. Otherwise it will go to the wayside, as technology 'advances'.

 

[Theory of Games]

the consumer has very little say in this, it will be oligarchs and lobbyists

The courts will have the final say. There's a flurry of lawsuits targeting AI happening.

Mid-Year Review: AI Lawsuit Developments in 2024

The development and launch of new generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies over the last two years has been revolutionary. But these advancements have been accompanied by significant concerns from copyright owner and creator communities about

copyrightalliance.org

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

People seem perfectly fine when an actor is updated with CGI or other tech to make them younger, look as though they're doing stunts, etc.

That doesn't seem to be the conversation around anti-aging CGI at all, in my experience. Even ones where the person looks convincing (i.e. not when it's used in Star Wars for some reason), the movement completely throws it off -- "young" Nick Fury still moves like a man in his 70s, "young" Indiana Jones jumps like a bouncy cartoon character, etc.

What the CGI mostly seems to provoke are conversations about whether it's somehow an improvement over casting a younger actor for those scenes instead.

 

[mamba]

Okay, yeah so the 'companies' / "oligarchs and lobbyists" as you say will decide whether or not their business will pursue those actions, but it will be up to the consumers to determine if there is market for it and whether it is profitable.

no, the consumers will not even know it is happening / which products used AI and in which way, and which ones did not use any

 

[mamba]

The courts will have the final say. There's a flurry of lawsuits targeting AI happening.

courts uphold the law, they do not make it, lobbyists do

 

[Theory of Games]

courts uphold the law, they do not make it, lobbyists do

Not always. Especially when "the lobby" has been fighting to preserve copyright laws forever.

 

[mamba]

Not always. Especially when "the lobby" has been fighting to preserve copyright laws forever.

they have been pretty good at that, the copyright only ever got longer

 

[velkymx]

I think everyone freaks when there is a huge disruptor in the market like AI. Whether or not you agree with it, the genie is out of the bottle and it's here to stay. It still doesn't change the fact that there needs to be editors or curators, just the foundation writers and artists, but at the same time, there are a million artists on the internet who will sell amazing (and I mean amazing) artwork for $20. Crap will still be produced, whether it's AI or human generated. The really great stuff will come from the ability to shape ANY source into something special that is marketable.