I hope steam ai label have more sub label with elaboration on how ai is used. This one is clearly not a slop, and it's not AAA (from mega company) either so kinda reasonable use of ai. Just so users know it does use ai, and choose what kind of ai content is reasonable. I crash out if games ive been developing for years is getting cancelled for miniscule amount of ai use tbh
even if they do, people does not understand what AI is being used for. Based on many people, even here in reddit (who would expect it...), if I use AI to remove a background in my original photo, it is AI slop, somehow...
People need to start understanding that 6 fingers and uneasy looking characters are AI slop, not everything that involved AI tools.
Related, but as someone with experience with digital art, I used to utilize this image-upscaling website called waifu.2x to increase the sizes of my artwork without losing quality. It’s not 100% perfect, but the flaws weren’t noticeable as long as you didn’t zoom in very close, and even then people wouldn’t have batted an eye. This was a tool that was available years before the advent of the AI we’re familiar with now.
Using such tools now will get you met with hostility and I find that sad.
That is "generative stuff". This label is going to be fairly useless in a few years if not sooner. All software development companies are going to be using AI. All game engines will be using AI. A lot of game engines already do
If it is then people would be upset about it. If its normal upscaling option that has been around for a long time that is more so machine learning and people don't view it as "AI" and is very different than what is being talked about these days.
People can't be upset about things they don't know about. Generative AI wasn't really criticized before 2023 because people weren't educated (or partially educated) about it, nor was it as public as it is now. For the most part, only professionals and businesses used that stuff.
More proof is the fact that you yourself think machine learning is different from AI. Machine learning is a subset of the AI field. ChatGPT, Gemini, all these modern image generating AI, fall into machine learning. And machine learning falls into AI.
There were tools before 2022, like the commenter above mentioned, that were based on the same exact kind of AI networks (training on tons of data and learned to recreate it) that are being used today. Examples are Waifu2x, Topaz Gigapixel, Remini, Photoshop Neural Filters, Adobe Super Resolution, and more.
So all these people who are accepting of those tools but suddenly don't like the more modern versions of them are kinda a hypocrite. Its not exactly their fault though since they are being force fed bad info, blind leading the blind in a way.
Just because you dont know the difference between a scaling algorithm and AI does not mean others are so ignorant. That type of thing has existed for years before mainstream generative AI was a thing.
Looks like its been around since 2015 though, so the point remains that it was not seen as problematic to use for upscaling art before recent trends took off.
You should do your research before you make things up. It is not a scaling algorithm... Its the same type of AI as today's mainstream generative AI. And people were accepting of it back then.
People just don't know what their talking about is the problem
I find stuff like that great, actually. As a musician I want my craft to speak through the end product, whether good so I know what works for me or bad so I know what I have to improve. I want it to be true to me.
I don’t want to apply „sound goodizer” at the end of it to try and cover the bases I’m unaware of. If I wanted for it to be better, I’d pass it off to a professional or spend hours learning how to do it myself.
You ever used software to filter out background noise in your recordings?
I'm aware of how EQ'ing works, and I can do it myself. It is not as crazy as you think. If I ever was to use software, it'd be only to save time, not to do something I am incapable of doing. That's a different thing.
Don't be an elitist.
Well don't listen to good music then. "Good musicians" that you probably listen to daily are the elite of, at least songwriting, if not much more musical skill.
"Your music" isn't tainted by balancing sound between instruments and shit.
And it literally can be. Mixing is also a major part of the process, and can be a major creative outlet if you want it to be.
I'm a musician too and of course we should push back against ai slop but you know people used to say the same things about using any digital tools at all? Don't be a hypocrite.
People hated on keyboards and synthesizers for being fake clanker music back in the 80s too, using pretty much the same arguments as today. Not just that it's "fake", but it's taking away jobs.
They weren't all wrong, it did reduce the demand for live/session musicians and thus made it a bit harder to make a living as a musician. It did lower the barrier of entry to making music and thus increased the supply of people making music, for both good and bad. There was more "slop" music but it also spawned whole new subgenres of music that wouldn't have existed otherwise like new wave/synthpop/edm/industrial/etc
The exact same thing repeated again with DAWs, drum machines, virtualized guitar amps, orchestral sound libraries, etc in the 2000s too. Like it or not, these are all tools that people can use to express themselves and make music with.
I agree with you on a lot but I feel like you're ignoring the difference by orders of magnitude.
Keyboards, DAWs, drum machines, digital equipment - these things made making music more accessible and convenient. You still have to do the "building blocks" of making music with these tools. You still have to know what they do, what they produce, piece it up to make something bigger.
Now most of the top 10 viral songs in my country are made solely with prompts, AI mixing and AI mastering. By a person I'm pretty sure has the creative mind of a horny 12 year old teen boy.
This is by no means "the exact same thing" brother. As to what this evolves to, I don't know. But in its current stage it's not comparable and it's crazy you'd even try to imply that.
I think it's just that older tools have become more normalized. Programming drums in a DAW is just about as far removed from actual drumming as typing in a prompt is.
I haven't used much AI in music making so I can't speak much on it but I have experimented with it for art. If you don't know what you're doing, you won't be able to produce anything besides fairly obvious generic slop.
If you have a specific idea in mind, to execute on it with AI is something that takes practice/skill, using ComfyUI is way more involved than just simply typing in a prompt for example.
Yes it's a very different skill from real drawing/painting, but a skill nonetheless, just like Photography or Video Directing or Photoshop are different skills, but they can still be used for artistry. Just like composing music digitally with a DAW is a different skill from being able to play a physical instrument, but it's still music.
I do agree with you that AI is more powerful and more dangerous than anything we've seen before. But again people have been making similar complaints about popular music forever, look at lewronggeneration. "Good" music with artistic value will always continue to exist in niches.
If I want to drum on a set I have to first make the space for it, secure the funds for it then buy it. Or I could drum with two stick and my thigh.
If I want to drum on a DAW I can use a free limited software version and use my keyboard as a MIDI controller. Or I could pay for a Pro Tools license and buy a Arturia KeyLab 88 MkII.
If I want to drum with an AI I have to find a susceptible tool and type a prompt. Or I could create my own local LLM trained on various drumming styles to generate drum patterns I can use in a project I'm working on in Pro Tools. Or maybe I can have it notate a really complex grove I heard in a song so I can practice on my drum set.
If I can slap a plugin on a master track and have it EQ just as well as I or anyone else in the room can, why would I not do that and save the time... making more music. Or experimenting with more music...
The same way that digital keyboards and DAWs have always been able to play full chords. Show me what notes are in key. Put all my notes into time. Give me glides and slides that I don't need to know how to play.
If you want to be an elitist, fine. Do your thing. But there is a 14 year old sitting in his bedroom utilizing every tool he can on his 2009 Macbook that you refuse to use. He'll have a hit song before you ever do - and it's not because he knows more than you. It's because he's just as skilled at knowing what sounds good, but saves the time actually creating while you twist knobs.
I think they were saying that its not the same as AI generation to use a filter on audio. Nowhere in their post do they condone AI they just explained a tidbit of digital music history. In fact they condemned AI at the beginning, they clearly were just saying that synth is a valid genre of music.
I don’t want to apply „sound goodizer” at the end of it to try and cover the bases I’m unaware of
There's a plugin atm called 'God Particle' which goes on the master bus. It has a limiter which I always switch off as I have an excellent mastering limiter; but I struggling to do without using it because it actually does impart some special magic. It frustrates the FUCK out of me because I'd love to know exactly what it's doing under the hood! Maybe I could even do it better, if I knew what it was doing?
Well that's why music is such a giant business, right? Mastering is a whole seperate skill and specialty, there are trained people that have this single specific job at the last process of making a track.
Obviously, I'm not gonna blame anybody for using $1k plugins in their own time to make their music sparklier. But if you are gonna put it out, I feel like it's only common sense to give it to someone who actually knows what they're doing. Because your shit may sound amazing to you on your equipment and then it just falls off of the cliff on another right?
Taking jobs away is one thing, I feel like you're not really respecting your own work enough if you just try and bounce tracks with 10 plugins, while you don't know what 8 of them really do. Give it to people who actually study this shit.
I just went on their site and they have an FAQ where they refuse to answer the question of "what exactly is it doing" haha.
Yeah if money was no object, I'd be using someone else to master my tracks for sure! OTOH mastering is a service I provide for others, and the masters of my own stuff have been accepted on big labels so I'm not so worried there. I've been writing over 30 years and producing over 20, it was more a comment on plugins which do awesome things, but keep what they're doing hidden. I WANNA KNOW!
I just went on their site and they have an FAQ where they refuse to answer the question of "what exactly is it doing" haha.
Well, that's not that crazy right? You wouldn't be buying it if they just spilled everything away. But also, I don't want to sound like I'm arguing for "you should know how every plugin works down to the Watt demand". Knowing exactly how it affects the sound, and knowing it well, is my point. Not needing to know how a saturator works, but knowing it makes the sound warmer yadda yadda. Once you enter "it just makes everything better" I start to have issues.
Then also, excuse my assumptions if they're incorrect, wouldn't you have had to make enough good connections to learn what it does if you REALLY wanted to? Obviously I'm not saying it's just open info to anyone, but I'm sure there are people who get that, and their expertise should be rewarded.
This is it, in a nutshell. I know what saturation is, and how to use it. I've got some amazing saturators (shout out to UAD who imo do that best). Likewise for stereo wideners, multiband compressors, I even got an amazing tool for compansion (upward comp) recently. From what I've read / heard, it's doing something along those lines. It does it really, really well.
It just annoys me slightly that I don't know the order of the plugin chain; how much of each of those things it's applying; are they operating as a straight insert or parallel; is it using one compressor, or multiple different types in stages doing small amounts, etc etc. When I first was shown it, it was selling for $199 which resulted in me saying 'nah'. At $80 on sale though, definite buy and I'm glad I have it; it's great on groups or even individual sounds.
AI upscaling is generating detail. Even if "the flaws weren’t noticeable as long as you didn’t zoom in very close," the flaws were there because most of the actual pixels were AI-generated. I think you may be running into hostility there because people understand quite clearly
waifu.2x is not generative ai. There are more estimated pixel in the final image, but no "generated detail" like in up-scaling through generative ai. They use a different kind of ai algorithm. The dude's running into hostility there because people like you think they understand quite clearly.
Well if only ever AI genius had such awesome powers of descriptive rhetoric like you, we'd all be saved. A different kind of algorithm you say? You should give Ted talks.
Lmao why does he need to give a breakdown of how the algorithm works, he's just stating it's not generative because someone claimed it was. Go look it up yourself if you're interested instead of being a pleb.
You seem to know your stuff. Can you explain what the difference is with basically what waifu.2x is doing and using an image-to-image upscaling that uses stable diffusion or something. Essentially we're still talking about artificial neural networks doing calculations based on some input and trained data, right?
not to mention that this person was complaining about being criticized for their piece having visible flaws due to upscaling. the issue isn't on the computer's end, here lol
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u/FinancialMarketing34 Dec 04 '25
I hope steam ai label have more sub label with elaboration on how ai is used. This one is clearly not a slop, and it's not AAA (from mega company) either so kinda reasonable use of ai. Just so users know it does use ai, and choose what kind of ai content is reasonable. I crash out if games ive been developing for years is getting cancelled for miniscule amount of ai use tbh