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.

 

[Von Corellon]

genie is out of the bottle and it's here to stay

not if you unplug it

 

[Marc Radle]

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

not if you unplug it

Do you want Terminators? Because that's how you get Terminators.

 

[Abstruse]

I swear, we have this same conversation about some "new tech" that is "inevitable" and will "take over everything" every couple of years. First it was cryptocurrency, then it was NFTs, then it was the Metaverse. Now it's LLMs and generative algorithms. Curious what industry buzzword they're going to pointlessly shoehorn into everything against the wishes of workers, creators, and consumers next once the plagiarism lawsuits resolve and the free money being shoveled into all these companies gets turned off because they haven't been able to turn a profit.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I swear, we have this same conversation about some "new tech" that is "inevitable" and will "take over everything" every couple of years. First it was cryptocurrency, then it was NFTs, then it was the Metaverse.

Who, other than the people selling those products, said any of that nonsense was going to take over anything? (You can add 3D TVs to that list.) All of those clearly were and are snake oil and everyone knew it. Cybertrucks are a more successful product than NFTs and those literally provoke people pointing and laughing when they drive by in Southern California.

AI, unfortunately, seems like it has a lot more legs. You can't create revenge porn or other awfulness with an NFT, or effectively spread election misinformation with the metaverse, and that means there's an audience for what you can do with AI, even if most people would wish otherwise.

 

[dragoner]

I swear, we have this same conversation about some "new tech" that is "inevitable" and will "take over everything" every couple of years. First it was cryptocurrency, then it was NFTs, then it was the Metaverse. Now it's LLMs and generative algorithms. Curious what industry buzzword they're going to pointlessly shoehorn into everything against the wishes of workers, creators, and consumers next once the plagiarism lawsuits resolve and the free money being shoveled into all these companies gets turned off because they haven't been able to turn a profit.

True, though I think there is a push back against the enchitification of everything, I know someone who is a librarian, and the kids will do "no phone" hangouts as a thing. Pencil and paper games are on the rise. Already the marketers aren't seeing the same budgets to push AI, the jobs changing.

 

[aramis erak]

courts uphold the law, they do not make it,

Provably false in the US and UK. The Caselaw doctrine (aka stare decisis (sp?)) applies in both - prior cases are consider to hold legal force and are used as much as, or more than, the actual statutes and regulations.

Regulations also hold force of law. But they're made by regulators - persons appointed by the government to make rules by delegated authority from the legistative branch.

The three bodies of law in both nations are statutory (created by the legistators), regulatory (created by appointed regulators), and precedent (created by the courts in interpreting and/or rejecting portions of statute and/or regulation. It's worth noting that the US codifies statutory law into the US code; The UK doesn't do that... but both have statutory law.

UK Law Reports | Faculty of Law.

US The Judiciary: Courts and Case Law | U.S. Department of the Interior.

The role of lobbyists is too political to discuss.

 

[mamba]

Provably false in the US and UK. The Caselaw doctrine (aka stare decisis (sp?)) applies in both - prior cases are consider to hold legal force and are used as much as, or more than, the actual statutes and regulations.

eh, the supreme court might generate law that way when they abuse their power, otherwise they decide how to properly interpret the law, same as the lower courts.

That later judgments follow that precedent makes sense, you want consistency, but ultimately it was a decision about the proper intent / interpretation of an existing law, not the creation of a new one (blatant abuses notwithstanding)

 

[aramis erak]

eh, the supreme court might generate law that way when they abuse their power, otherwise they decide how to properly interpret the law, same as the lower courts.

That later judgments follow that precedent makes sense, you want consistency, but ultimately it was a decision about the proper intent / interpretation of an existing law, not the creation of a new one (blatant abuses notwithstanding)

The Supreme Court, the Courts of Appeals, and the State Supreme Courts have ALL beeing doing that in the US since the 1810's... with Shea's Rebellion and other such. And ruling in the 1850's that no state has the right to secede from the union. Until changed, those have binding force...
The 9th circuit is notorious for forcing Californian values on Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii by decisions which nullify parts of laws. Been that way since it was created.

Violating court decisions is charged as Contempt, and carries fines and jail times. That's close enough to law when it's cases like Roe v. Wade, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Miranda v. Arizona, and Brown v. Board of Education. The constitution itself, even as amended, does not explicitly protect against discrimination; the civil rights act of 1964 isn't an amendment, and Brown was 1954, barring segregation before the CRA64. And prior to Brown, segregation was the law of the land since Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, under the claim "separate but equal."

Most of American jurisprudence is built upon precedent, not the US Code... The very lack of actual ownership of real property, and the need for a title deed, both are based upon precedents of the Courts of the United Kingdom... Sure, the charges are usually statutory, but the broad injuction power of the SCOTUS has been the supreme law of the US since at least the US Civil War.

 

[Theory of Games]

I'm looking for other major ttrpg companies to get in line with "No AI". The wave is growing nationally