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.

 

[Ashley Cartwright]

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).

What do you mean, isn't feasible? What is not feasible about choosing not to use a particular tool?

 

[aramis erak]

What do you mean, isn't feasible? What is not feasible about choosing not to use a particular tool?

Most likely, some artists will use AI tools, and strip the metadata, pass it off as non-AI work.
Some author's submission will have been massaged by Grammerly, unmentioned.
And so on.

 

[Spectral Anomaly]

I'd like to know if Kobold Press' (and other no-AI publishers') stance will change as AI is more thoughtfully incorporated into workflow tools – that is tools that enable creative types to iterate on ideas as opposed to removing key elements of the creative process.

A good example of this is Adobe's recently revealed Project Turntable. It uses generative AI to take vector drawings and calculate how those vector paths would appear if viewed from different angles, allowing what were previously static elements to be rotated and modified/viewed from different perspectives. Note that even after a transform that the entire image is still vectorized, meaning it can continue to be manipulated in the same way as the original source drawing.

@Marc Radle, any thoughts on this?

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

What do you mean, isn't feasible? What is not feasible about choosing not to use a particular tool?

What I mean is the rest of the post after the bit you are talking about. Caring human beings will know that this is a good thing. The problem is, in the real world, most human beings are not caring (or more accurately, the degree to which they are caring is at an acuteness that cuts off everyone but their very nearest and dearest). You can't fight that tide by simply being angry and shaking your fist at it.

 

[trappedslider]

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?

Fun fact: Since Disney owns the copyright to all of the art work done for them, they could in theory train a model on it and fire all of their current artist.

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.

This past year when Toys R us made their AI generated commercial

"Mock that Toys 'R' Us AI spot all you want — but it's just the beginning," wrote an advertisement copywriter named Dan Goldgeier on X. "Most consumers won't know the difference or care, and most marketers will be more than happy to make this kind of spot for less money."

 

[Ashley Cartwright]

What I mean is the rest of the post after the bit you are talking about. Caring human beings will know that this is a good thing. The problem is, in the real world, most human beings are not caring (or more accurately, the degree to which they are caring is at an acuteness that cuts off everyone but their very nearest and dearest). You can't fight that tide by simply being angry and shaking your fist at it.

But we can continue to not use AI, of course. Which is all that matters.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

But we can continue to not use AI, of course. Which is all that matters.

It's not all that matters, but in the long run, for this specific goal, it's futile. In the short run, and the long run, broadcasting to others that caring is important, is important. It affects the way humans view and treat each other. There's almost nothing more vital.

But for this particular windmill, protecting a type of job in its current incarnation at the cost of other benefits seems a bit self-centred.

 

[Ashley Cartwright]

It is all that matters.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

It is all that matters.

I understand and I see you.

 

[trappedslider]

I have to wonder if social media had been around would there have been an out cry when Disney used copy machines to do some of the work on 101 Dalmatians instead of human artist?