WotC Would you buy WotC products produced or enhanced with AI?

[Bae'zel]

Currently the issue is that the AI might insert facts from someone's Lady Silvehand/Elminster fan fiction to it, and then just hallucinate some other details.

Absolutely.

If WotC created a AI chatbot with access to all of WotC and TSR's published catalogues, and only those, then I'd be fine with it.

 

[mamba]

I think it is there because of biases of the human artists and the computers do not display the same sort of biases to the same degree.

if the bias is in the data used to ‘train’ it, of course they do, we have examples of biased, even racist, AI

 

[mamba]

Well I just downloaded a Chrome extension that annoying "AI Overview" from Google searches, and removes AI-generated images from my image search results.

does it use AI to figure out which picture is AI?

 

[ezo]

does it use AI to figure out which picture is AI?

LOL I was going to point that out but thought better of it... so I'm glad someone said it.

 

[The Firebird]

TLDR: Tell me you didn't read my last post without telling me you didn't read my last post that covers this already: Here you are posting more comparisons of human behavior to that of computers.

Humans don't "rearrange data" like a computer, please stop making these comparisons as they not only don't work, but trying to use them as an analogy is just drifting the thread further away from fact and into the realm of fiction.

Let me restate my point, because I don't think it came across. I am not claiming humans and LLMs work identically. I am not claiming humans creativity is rearranging data. I am not claiming there is anything similar about the way LLMs and humans function.

I'm making a point about creativity--that it is possible to make a highly creative work relying only on things that are already extant. I gave you examples of this.

Looking at the practical applications, for all the work stolen, for all the countless billions of dollars burned, for all the energy wasted, for all the water consumed, what do they have to show for this massive expenditure of effort, energy, and human labor? Shiny plastic pictures? "Hallucinating" ai that generate a book about mushrooms that gets published, and as a result people could get poisoned from eating things that no human should be consuming?

Well, I use LLMs in my job daily and they're a significant boon. Anyone who work in software or scientific computing will see similar benefits. It will speed the pace of scientific advancement. Transformers already contributed to the Chem Nobel, as I mentioned, and LLMs are being implemented broadly in the sciences, especially 'omic' fields. Personally I think there is quite a bit to show for it.

This kind of attitude is what I have in mind when I say that legitimate concerns about job market effects are causing people to be overly cynical about the technology as a whole. It has to be useless, it has to not be creative, because the alternative is so uncomfortable.

 

[Zaukrie]

No. I will not support any commercial product made using the plagiarism machines.

Same. Before I knew better, I used AI art in two products. I went in and deleted it all.... I'm not supporting thieves if I can help it.

Not to mention the environmental damage.

 

[Zaukrie]

I can understand that.

What do you think about WotC using their own archive of text and images?

Sure. If that's what they do, I'm possibly in. But even then, the water water is immense, so I'd likely not love it.

 

[CleverNickName]

does it use AI to figure out which picture is AI?

LOL I was going to point that out but thought better of it... so I'm glad someone said it.

LOL no, nothing like that. From what I can tell, it works similar to an ad blocker: it just keeps a list of known AI generators, their URLs, file naming conventions, meta tags, watermarks, and stuff. If one of them shows up in a Google Search, it tosses it out. It won't automatically block AI content that gets downloaded from somewhere and then renamed/reposted to a different site, though, so it is possible to circumvent it (just like it's possible to circumvent an ad blocker).

However, if I see something that I think is AI generated, I can blacklist that site by right-clicking on it and it will never show me image results from that site ever again...just like I can do with an ad blocker. I imagine the first few weeks will be like swatting flies, but my Internet searches get less annoying with every click.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

This doesn't by any means suggest human creativity will be lost. My ability to imagine and create isn't going anywhere, and nor is anyone else's. But we will have new and better tools to help us make our creative ideas real and then expand on those ideas.

It might even help get more exposure to human creativity. If we have a people with tremendous imagination that has made a very innovative campaign for his group, right now, he can either store it on his shelf, never to be seen again, or put it online in the haphazard state of his notes and hope people will like it, but since the cost of entry for another GM to use it would be great, the product might get unnoticed. If he can just throw the notes and ask an LLM to structure, develops with better word and illustrate the product in order to produce a coherent PDF, for the 20$ cost of subscribing to an online AI service, it might do that and put the product on display. It might have more impact than the former way of distributing it, while he wouldn't spend money hiring professional designers, artists, proofreaders, and monks to create it just to put it online. So what we lose in terms of professional creators, we might get back by enabling otherwise blocked non-professional creators.

So why do I want these numbers? I believe that WotC is looking at AI to be a miracle worker. Cut their workforce in half, increase capacity, whatever. If they go through all that but lose their market, then why bother? This is, of course, believing that WotC will be honest about when they use AI in creating their products. For all we know Dragon Delves was 75% generated by an LLM.

My hope is the people's wish to buy products for humans made by humans will discourage WotC from going the AI path.

Honestly, I think the choice that WotC is considering isn't "Should we use AI to increase margin (and risk alienating a part of our target audience) or should we keep producing books the old fashioned way, accepting that our margin are high enough)". It think they fear that the alternative would be "don't use AI and have an entreprising competitor use AI to provide RPG books in the 30 dollars range instead of the 45 dollars range, convincing the customers that they actually didn't need man-made art, or just not telling where they sourced their art."

 

[Umbran]

Looking at the practical applications...

This is really a tangent to the disucssion...

With respect, we aren't looking at the "practical applications". We here talk about the applications to visual art, and prose text generation. These are consumer and RPG production applications. That's pretty limited practicality.

There's an entire scope of use of AI tools in the sciences and engineering that we never touch on - where there's no ethical issues because the data is openly available scientific research data. When biomedical research or computer chip design people train generative AIs on research data in order to help solve problems, that's a highly practical ball of wax we never address.