Monte Cook Games has responded after it temporarily placed a video made using AI assets on its social media channels. Earlier this week, Monte Cook Games uploaded a video titled "The Joy of RPGs" to its YouTube and social media pages that talked about the transformational fun of tabletop RPGs. Viewers of the video noticed that several b-roll clips of the video used what appeared to be AI assets, including a child holding an RPG character sheet that had gibberish words printed on them. After some social media uproar, Monte Cook removed the video and replaced it with a new video that had the offending footage removed.
Monte Cook notably has an anti-AI statement included on its "Core Values" webpage that reads "Generating imagery or text through a trained algorithm (“AI” or machine learning-derived art or writing) is the exact opposite of inspiration, vision, and passion. If a game or other product doesn’t express something that comes from the mind and heart of a creative human, it’s not the kind of thing we want to publish. In fact, it’s a betrayal of the values expressed here."
Monte Cook addressed the controversy on the BackerKit page for its latest project Cypher - Advanced. "We were asked last year to contribute to a segment of the short-form documentary series All Access with Andy Garcia, which airs on PBS stations across the US," the statement reads. "The production company took much of the footage from that segment and created this video about RPGs and MCG. We love the message of community and togetherness in the short film's story (it even won a couple of awards!). We hope you like it too! A side note: We posted a different version of this video to our YouTube channel yesterday, but it turned out that some of the stock footage used in that version included props generated by AI (such as a character sheet—or “Cliascic Charcism,” as it seemed to be labeled). Our position on generative AI is well-established; we were disappointed that the production company used this footage and deeply embarrassed that we didn't notice it ourselves. We took that version down and re-edited it to remove those shots. We stress that none of the actual content was ever AI-generated; it was limited to some of the props used in stock footage."
When contacted by EN World for comment, Monte Cook art director Bear Weiter provided some additional commentary as to what had occurred with the video. "Yes, this video was produced out of house—it was fully their production, with our cooperation and involvement," Weiter told EN World via email. "It would be easy to throw them under the bus, but I believe the mistake was an honest one. This company found stock footage (b-roll) from various stock sites that enhanced their production, selecting several segments of kids playing tabletop roleplaying games—and it’s quite well done. Unfortunately, the people that originally produced that stock footage introduced AI-generated props and handouts for the kids to play with for unknown reasons. The production company did not notice this." EN World was able to identify the stock footage as having come from Adobe.
"The bigger error is that we here at Monte Cook Games also did not notice this, and that is fully on us," Weiter continued. "We should have been more careful in our review, especially in this day and age. In particular, we are well aware that stock footage places (photos, videos, and more) have become inundated with AI-generated footage, and it has become a challenge to navigate this field of landmines—and we should have known to scrutinize this production with that in mind. This is going to be a hard place for all companies going forward—AI is going to slip by even the most diligent of us, and having the community support each other to keep AI out is going to become paramount. (There is, of course, a counter discussion regarding false accusations and witch trials toward creators—I’ve directly seen at least one artist that I know, who has been creating great art for years, be falsely accused on Reddit of creating AI art. This is not fitting for our situation, but clearly shows what a quagmire AI has become for us all.)"
"We stand by our anti-AI statement listed in our Core Values (which can be found on our website here),: Weiter said. "We make games for people, by people, and have no interest in supporting genAI. While editing over the video yesterday, I tried paying careful attention to any element that might stink of genAI, and ultimately replaced several video clips and an image or two, just to be sure. It’s important to us to be held to a high standard, and I wanted to ensure we’re putting our best foot forward."
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