D&D (2024) Using AI for Your Home Game

[Jfdlsjfd]

So, basically, if I don't want to pay for a burger, I can't have a burger. That's the rule for everything and that's the same with art.

Hmmm....

BUT... I have found a loophole!

Instead of having to either lunch in a restaurant, or stay hungry, I can have an industrial, frozen burger that I reheat in a microwave at work (ting!). It's much quicker than having lunch in a proper restaurant. It's also much inferior: the bread isn't freshly home-made, the beef is probably full of growth hormones, the cheese is certainly some imitation and not a real cheddar made in Somerset, within 30 miles of the cathedral of Wells. A deeply inferior product to be sure, but a filling meal anyway.

This also apply to shirts. There is no dichotomy like "if you are not willing to pay the price of tailor, you don't get to wear a shirt". There is a trick, very much like the burger one. Using an industrial machine constructed to imitate the work of the tailor and generate a shirt in much less time (you just need to pick it at the store, not taking measures and waiting litteraly months to get your bespoke shirt done), for a very small cost. Sure, it's inferior, it lacks soul and it's badly made (industrial shirts kind of fit, but the collar and elbows can be uncomfortable, and you won't find anything that will accomodate you if, like most humans, one of your arms is slightly longer than the other). But it's an acceptable alternative to going to work half-naked. From my experience, this little trick is quite well-known, since I haven't noticed many bare-chested coworkers and I am sure they don't all wear bespoke suits and dresses.

With art, it's the same. There is no dichotomy "either pay the price of an image maker, or accept not having any image". We can do the exact same thing as with burger and suits, get the quicker, less expensive version. Sure, it will be soulless and spitted out by a machine, it will have imperfect hands sometime and details will be off like a cat's whisker being too symmetrical, but it will mostly do the job in 99% of the cases. That's definitely not the same product, probably not targetting the same market.

I don't feel bad at using AI anymore than I feel bad wearing non-bespoke clothes (mostly) and eating industrial food (very occasionally). I am all for people having the choice to either get a quick & half-bad product or a hand-made product, but I can see how most people won't afford the luxury of the bespoke product and get the more convenient, cheaper alternative. For this reason, I am not leaning toward forbidding AI images, ready-made food and off-the-peg clothes.

 

[ECMO3]

Right, you undervalue the labor the artist does, and therefore aren’t willing to pay the price they ask for it. Which means you don’t get the product. Thats how this works, just like how if you aren’t willing to pay the price a restaurant is asking for a burger, you either have to make your own or accept not getting to eat a burger.

I am not buying their labor, I am buying the image.

As far as the burger comparison, in the same fashion I can get a better burger from my own oven. Saying I should not use AI because it does not support artists is like saying I should not cook my own hot dogs and hamburgers because it does not support restaurant chefs.

Also, I am supporting the human workers programming and developing the LLMs and AI tools and in the burger comparison I am supporting the workers at the food store and those working at the power company.

$50 for a day’s work is like $6.25 an hour. For skilled labor! That artist is selling their labor at a significant discount in order to keep competitive in the market, and to you that comes across as an outrageous cost.

If it takes them a whole day, which I don't think it does. In any case, I get generally around $80 for a 4-hour paid D&D session after paying the service charge. A 4-hour session takes about 6 hours of prep time, so after taking out costs, I would say $6.25 an hour is probably not much less than what I am getting ..... if it actually takes them a whole day to do it.

Right, so you are unwilling to compensate real humans fairly for the value of their work, and instead are going to use a machine that steals their labor and spits out soulless imitations.

I am more than willing to compensate them for the value of their work (i.e. the product or work of art), but not for their labor.

One-for-one I find the AI images to generally be about as good for me as the human-generated images for the games I play. Some are better than others (and some a lot worse), but generally about equal. On a cost and timeliness basis though, the AI images are way better, not just a little better, but a lot better for me and my games.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I am not buying their labor, I am buying the image.

The image is the product of that labor. In literally every other transaction you make, you are paying for labor.

And when using AI, you are taking the product of a lot of peoples' labor stolen by a big company that is benefiting from your use is their tool to make that tool better at stealing.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

So now I'm supposed to kill my creativity and replae it with a worthless toy to give my players bland generic experience devoid of fun? If this is the future, I hope I won't live to see it.

 

[Charlaquin]

I am not buying their labor, I am buying the image.

Which could not have been made without their labor, and their labor is part of the price of the image. This is just basic economics.

As far as the burger comparison, in the same fashion I can get a better burger from my own oven. Saying I should not use AI because it does not support artists is like saying I should not cook my own hot dogs and hamburgers because it does not support restaurant chefs.

No, see, the equivalent to cooking your own burger in this analogy is making your own art. You may protest, “but I’m not a good artist.” Yeah, that’s why it’s skilled labor. The ability to make quality art is something that takes a great deal of training and practice to learn to do, and in most cases that training is extremely expensive. Accordingly, people who have that skill can charge more for it, because the demand is greater than the supply. Again, basic economics.

Also, I am supporting the human workers programming and developing the LLMs and AI tools and in the burger comparison I am supporting the workers at the food store and those working at the power company.

Right, you’re supporting the people who are building tools designed to steal labor value. See, the thing is, those LLMs don’t just make images ex nihilo. They have to be trained how to make those images by feeding them hundreds of thousands of examples, all of which were made by artists and not paid for. This is the point where the burger analogy breaks down, but if we were to force it to fit, you’d be paying people who made some sort of burger-cloning machine that all the chefs and short order cooks and fast food line workers of the world were forced to contribute feedback to developing.

If it takes them a whole day, which I don't think it does. In any case, I get generally around $80 for a 4-hour paid D&D session after paying the service charge. A 4-hour session takes about 6 hours of prep time, so after taking out costs, I would say $6.25 an hour is probably not much less than what I am getting ..... if it actually takes them a whole day to do it.

Sure, if you’re willing to under-charge for your own labor, that’s a choice you’re free to make. Or, maybe it’s a choice you’re forced to make to keep your prices competitive because of market forces outside your control. These are factors artists also deal with. But, DMing is a less specialized skill than most visual art, so it’s generally in greater supply. Regardless, the cost is the cost. If people want the product, they can pay what’s being asked for it, or they can learn to make the product for themselves, or they can accept not having the product. Stealing the product is generally not considered a socially acceptable option, with good reason, because society generally requires trust to function. But, in this case, there are widely available art theft machines, and people are just accepting their existence. Pardon me if I refuse.

I am more than willing to compensate them for the value of their work (i.e. the product or work of art), but not for their labor.

Labor is part of the cost of literally any product. That’s why products cost more than the net value of their raw materials.

One-for-one I find the AI images to generally be about as good for me as the human-generated images for the games I play. Some are better than others (and some a lot worse), but generally about equal. On a cost basis though, the AI images are way better, not just a little better, but a lot better for me and my games.

Yes, because the labor value isn’t part of the cost of AI-generated images, because that labor was stolen. Machines can’t make art. What they do is redistribute and recombine a small portion of the labor done by countless artists, without compensating them for that labor. If the owners of these LLMs actually had to pay royalties to the artists whose work the LLMs were trained on, you can bet your ass the products would be a lot more expensive. Probably more expensive than buying direct from an artist, because the LLM owners would still want their cut (and reasonably so; the creation of those models did take work, and the people who did that work should be fairly compensated for it).

 

[Distracted DM]

If artists were willing to do my art for a reasonable price and meet my timeline I would have them do it. Last time I did this though it was like $50 for something that honestly wasn't that great and took like a day and a half to get back to me.

If you know an artist that is willing to work with me and develop character art for under $1 an image and do it on demand in minutes I will use them. Until I can find such an artist, I am going to keep using AI.

Is this not facetious? It has to be.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I am not buying their labor, I am buying the image.

That's a very important thing lots of people are missing. The customer pays for the end products. He doesn't care if it took a lot of effort to make or if it was made effortlessly. He doesn't care if it took years of training to learn how to draw or if it just came naturally to the painter.

When you're buying 6.2 millions for a banana stitched to a wall, you're paying for the effort it took to stitch the banana, which was likely minimal. You're buying the product, which is a strong statement about modern art, whose you value, obviously, much more than the work put to create the artwork.

Paying for labor would mean that it would be natural to pay more for a meal made by a poor cook, who did a lot of effort to create a half-cooked bland bagel, than you'd pay for a good tasty bagel made quickly by someone who has basic cooking abilities.

This is not how it works: the valuation is based purely on the result. The labor is part of the cost on the producer part, and there is obviously some venture that are successful (when labor cost is inferior to the revenue produced) and some which aren't (when cost exceed the revenue). It doesn't mean that one shouldn't paint if they can't sell their paintings, it just means that it's not something they can benefit from. Van Gogh only sold one painting, yet he is generally acknowledged to be a greater artist than most people who will accept commission for Random NPC #43 online. Success as an artist isn't correlated to financial success as an entrepreneur selling images.

What does make the price? Generally the law of supply and demand. Supply has greatly increased with AI, especially supply of average, throwaway images -- the AI didn't stitch a banana to a wall yet -- making it available for a few cents. Naturally, prices will adjust accordingly, much like when sewing machine imitated tailors to mass-produce suits, driving the clothes prices down... When was the last time to repaired an item of clothing? It certainly reduced the opportunity to make a living by sewing and tailoring (but it still exists, as there is a market, though reduced, for hand-made clothes). While it is certainly bad news for the producers of images, it is good news for the general public, who couldn't afford images before, to have them at really inexpensive prices.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

The image is the product of that labor. In literally every other transaction you make, you are paying for labor.

Not in a market economy you don't. Value is everything.

In most transactions, you pay more than the cost of labor. The difference between the cost of labor (+materials) and the value of the product is where the seller's profit comes from.

If the market changes so that the value of a product is less than the cost of the labor to produce it, the most expensive producers will go out of business. Sucks for them, but that's life.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

If the market changes so that the value of a product is less than the cost of the labor to produce it, the most expensive producers will go out of business. Sucks for them, but that's life.

Indeed. The economy does'nt care for people. If collectively we want artists to keep producing images (to foster an environment where innovative, striking art is created, for example), it is not an economic policy. It's a matter of social policies (can we afford and we want, collectively, to support people doing things for which there is no longer a market?) and cultural policies (can we afford and do we want measures to encourage art, like free access to museums, free (art) education, public spending in the cultural sector...) much like some countries do support non-competetive agriculture because they pursue a non-economic goal (like, being self-sufficent if they happen to be blockaded).

But I feel such a topic is quite outside the scope of a thread dedicated to using AI for our home games.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not in a market economy you don't. Value is everything.

In most transactions, you pay more than the cost of labor. The difference between the cost of labor (+materials) and the value of the product is where the seller's profit comes from.

Well, that’s debatable. Where does this alleged excess value come from, if not the labor? Under some theories, it doesn’t; the seller simply steals a portion of the product’s value from the laborers who produced it.

If the market changes so that the value of a product is less than the cost of the labor to produce it, the most expensive producers will go out of business. Sucks for them, but that's life.

Again, this depends on what theory of value you’re using. Arguably the true value of the product can’t be less than the total cost of materials plus that added by labor done on those materials. Market forces can make it so that that a product that is in high supply relative to demand might not be salable at its full value, and so the cost of labor must be partially discounted. And, yeah, that is unfair to the laborers. Some might say this is a case against the equity of market economies. On the other hand, market forces can result in a product being able to be sold at a cost greater than its true value, if demand is high relative to supply. This is good for sellers and laborers, and a case for why markets are good at generating wealth for the owners of the means of production. But it’s not great for consumers.