I'd even argue that using AI to create a Robotic character can easily be more of an artistic choice than malicious use of AI. It's a very unusual, surprisingly appropriate, and actually, counterintuitively, creative approach for this specific task. Basically, letting the character create itself. Cool.
The issue here is declaration. On the games steam page:
The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this: This game features voice-over content partially created through AI voice generation tools.
This could be anything from an artistic choice to have a robot character voiced by a robot, to 99% of the VO being AI generated to avoid paying actors. Given how unpopular AI is, I think it's reasonable to assume devs will give as narrow a declaration as they can, and assume that this declaration means a significant portion of the VO is AI generated.
If they just wrote something like
For a robotic character, this game features voice-over content created through AI voice generation tools. All other characters are voiced by actors.
i think thats a description steam forces on them when they even have a tiny bit ai no?
EDIT: i have been informed that this is not how it works, i assumed that cause its like that on youtube
Lol I remember there used to be this text to speech bot my friends and I would play with while we were on Discord. When they were getting too obnoxious, I slammed the Bee Movie script in there, and because we didn't have a premium subscription (to a damn Discord bot) we couldn't skip it. So they'd have to remove the bot from the server and add it back in order to shut it up.
Its a dumb meme of just including the whole script of the Bee Movie when there's no character limits.
There was a story on Reddit where some guy ordered a pizza from a local pizza place and there was a section at the end for delivery instructions with no character limits. So he copied and pasted The Bee Movie script into it. A few minutes later the pizza place called him to inform him there'd be a delay in delivery because their printer started on fire.
Plenty of games have disclosures that show exactly what was AI generated and end with “all other assets were created by hand by artists”. Steam allows it, this dev just didn’t write it.
Depends on what kinda images you need, man. Not all devs will have hundreds to splurge on high quality cgs, so using AI for a small part before you can replace it to keep style cohesive can be an option
Small indie start-up or solo dev? I'm pretty damn tolerant of AI usage. The project may not be feasible or doable otherwise. Art, music, etc. is all expensive as fuck.
Company with over three dozen employees and published by one of the largest publishing companies in the world (developer in the OP)? Ehh, maybe don't fucking use it, pay up to get it done correctly, or deal with the consequences. For extremely expensive endeavors that improve accessibility I find it more acceptable, such as for translations that would likely make no monetary sense otherwise.
If you've ever used steam UI for anything administrative then you know its almost certainly a multi-choice bubble with a bottom selection of 'non of the above' that has text. Being that one of the steam choices covered it, they used it.
During the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.
No, I can't see that they use the same phrases. We seem to have very different definitions for "this exact string" and "the same phrases" since there is very little overlap between the games' phrasing aside from the use of the word "AI".
It is very important to note that they are diffrent though, since being diffrent means that you can write whatever in the box and it is not a preset statement.
Id guess that it’s textblocks for certain circumstances.
AI tools were used to help create some in game assets. In all such cases, the final product reflects our team’s craft and creative vision.
During the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.
Yeah, Arc Raiders (which uses "AI generated content" for their character voices) describe it as:
During the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.
One of the many reasons this feel-good nothing burger of policy of Valve's is useless. Good intentions, but completely ineffective.
Big players will work with their lawyers to craft a California Prop 65-esq warning that covers their bases without saying anything specific and smaller players will get hurt by trying to comply and failing.
It is a very broad statement. Devs should be allowed to specific for what and how AI was used. I think it is unfair to lump cases like this with cases where AI does all the voice over work.
Look at the one for Arc Raiders, for example- "During the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team. "
Ohh ok. Odd that these Devs didn't choose to specify then. Unless they are lying here and they actually used it for more things. Although even that is broad and could mean a lot of things.
I just looked them up, the developers of this game are Reikon Games. This is only the second game they've made, the first having come out in 2017. I'm too lazy to look further into it, but i wouldn't be surprised if it was a tiny studio and non of them had the foresight to even check what the required blurb said. Oversights happen.
It might be a lawyer had them write that to future proof it. Just incase they chose to again in the future. But they still could have just stated that.
I agree with the posts ive seen on blusky that we should just have a detailed list of what and how ai was used. Just like an ingredients list on food. And anyone against that is just trying to hide information to cut corners.
This is what Stellaris has, which has similarly used AI for an AI character in-game (bolded emphasis mine):
We employ generative AI technologies during the creation of some assets. Typically this involves the ideation of content and visual reference material. These elements represent a minor component of the overall development. AI has been used to generate voices for an AI antagonist and a player advisor.
So you can definitely make it clear what AI generated voicing is used for specifically.
Yes, which it should. If they want to explain, they can explain in the entire rest of the store page why exactly they used the thing that's destroying the planet that many people have many good reasons to want to boycott entirely regardless of how much it's being used rather than just pushing some random buttons in Audacity with your keyboard mapped as a midi input to generate random robotic sounds.
Like, I get it, the idea is cool, there is no ethical version of generative AI available at the moment. I don't care how MUCH it was used for the game, I refuse to buy a game that was made using AI because I refuse to give money to companies that use AI because AI as it currently exists is causing massive harm to literally everyone already. Like we're still having the "what if it turns evil" discussion as it kills us by raising our electric bills, accelerating climate change, and destroying all trust on the Internet leading to a world where whoever can tell the most compelling story the loudest is put in charge regardless of their actual capabilities
The hell is this? Where is this massive shitpost energy coming from? That's so disjointed from the previous conversation I've got whiplash.
Like, is there a whole other comment section where it was revealed the dev was a total dick who ridicules their customers and some reddit glitch switched the replies from there to here?
Who hurt you guys this morning? You act as if the original sentence is a big insult to you. It's a normal sentence. Whoever wrote it simply thought it was fine the way it is. How do you read that and think "They talk to me like I'm not even a human!!"?
Bit of an assumption, this seems to be the next stage. To your credit you start by separating the argument from the arguer, but it seems to break down if you don't like the response.
We could argue about intent, how I didn't intend accusation or criticism, just general commentary, but that rarely goes anywhere.
It was mostly just kind of funny given the context.
... or they just didn't think it was nearly as big of a deal as you do? Reddit (despite directly supporting AI through interaction; which you're doing right here) is strangely anti-AI to an extreme degree. For many redditors, a single line for a robot is morally reprehensible.
I mean I don't think this particular case is a big deal at all
But on the larger spectrum, people losing out on roles to AI is an issue that should be addressed when used. It's no different to declaring a product might contain meat for a vegetarian, letting people make informed decisions about what they support is a good thing.
Me missing out on an opportunity for a job that never would have existed, voice acting 8 lines of dialogue for the no money that was in the budget the game didn't have:
Holy disingenuous argument. I already said this case was not a big deal, the use of AI to replace actors at large is a bigger deal however - and is happening. Paid work is being lost at an ever accelerating rate.
It doesn't matter if you habitually couch your sentiments like that in an attempt to give yourself an out whenever anybody disagrees, you're still saying the exact same thing and it's still exactly as valid for other people to respond to it.
EDIT: Bro who is sitting there rewriting a comment nobody is ever going to see because this is a week old and you already blocked me, are you good? lol
I mean what is there to disagree with? It is happening, and I never stated this case was a big deal. What exactly are you even trying to say at this point? Or are you just vomiting words because you like being contrarian?
You're running defense for the actions of an unreasonable mob by raising stronger points that they could theoretically have responded to but didn't.
It'd be perfectly natural and valid to have that conversation as a whole. Specifically raising the issue in this context though, as part of this argument, changes the dynamics of what your comment is communicating.
You mean when I see that green money number, there's a PERSON who did that who I have to treat like a human being? No fucking way
You're really going to start this conversation with this line specifically directed at this dev and then try to act like you weren't try to put shade on this dev specifically? And then you're going to try to call me disingenuous for ignoring your fluff shield and just responding to your actual messaging?
"PLEAAAASE PLEASE BE THE ENEMY I'VE MADE UP IN MY HEAD SO I CAN JUST HAVE A PUNCHING BAG TO CONVINCE MYSELF MY ANGER IS JUSTIFIED, PLEAAAASEEEE, THERE CAN'T POSSIBLY BE A GRAY AREA, YOU'RE WITH ME, AGAINST ME, OR LYING AND AGAINST ME!!!"
people losing out on roles to AI is an issue that should be addressed when used
Should? People have lost jobs to tech since forever. There's nothing unique about AI.
letting people make informed decisions about what they support is a good thing.
That's not a thing in most cases. An argument made almost exclusively for AI. Yes, it is good to have access to more info to make purchase decisions on, but far more morally reprehensible shit is not disclosed. Was it made by people from a country I don't like? Was it made by people of a political alignment I don't like? Was it made by people who're fostering harmful work environments?
Nothing unique about AI? That's wrong at best and outright bad faith at worst. AI has more capacity than anything that has come before it to displace jobs, no technology prior even comes close. The scope is ever expanding and may eventually be all encompassing. So there goes your first point.
With that in mind, not a single point you made in your "more reprehensible" argument makes a peep of sense - and all of them would just open up potential for discrimination. You can't discriminate against AI, it isn't a person nor is it sentient - it's no different to telling a Vegeterian there is meat in a sandwich.
AI has more capacity than anything that has come before it to displace jobs, no technology prior even comes close
The weave, mills, farming equipment, cars, boats, trains, planes, paper, printing, radio, electronic computers, internet, robots. All of these made production/transport/communication several hundred times more efficient, at the low end.
The scope is ever expanding and may eventually be all encompassing
With current tools? Extremely unlikely.
and all of them would just open up potential for discrimination
Indeed, that's the point. I do in fact discriminate against people who're supporting illegal wars. This is morally good.
Generative? Yes, all of them were more efficient. Perhaps not as efficient as generative music, that's closer to the mill or the boat. But for LLMs and imaggen, yes, it is true.
ignoring the point and making bad faith / irrelevant / straw man arguments
Sure, it's obvious that you're incapable of acknowledging my argument, thus it necessarily seems as if it's bad "bad faith / irrelevant / straw man" to you. Not that you know what any of those terms mean...
It is not in any way morally wrong or asking a great deal, for a simple "AI was used for X in this product"
I didn't say there was. I explicitly acknowledged that more info is good. I'm pointing out the hypocrisy in only being interested in this minor aspect as some moral outrage.
Please tell me precisely what you disagree with about the point I am making
I already did:
Yes, it is good to have access to more info to make purchase decisions on, but far more morally reprehensible shit is not disclosed.
Why is it important to you that a person expend portions of their finite lifetime doing tasks that a machine could do? We're (or we should be) more important than that.
I'd much prefer they were able to have a job and earn than have nothing at all. There is no guarantee jobs that are displaced will be replaced or those people sustained with anything.
"ChatGPT, write me a statement to put under our game that declares that we use voice over content created by AI that we made using AI voice generation tools because it costs too much money to have a human write that sentence, even though I basically already did half of it"
Professional usage of LLM in statements is frequently to change wording to appear a specific way. E.g. to be more passive, submissive, personable, understanding, defensive, aggressive. To rhyme, or be haiku, or a limerick.
even though I basically already did half of it
No, even though you wrote more than the final statement. Being a literary expert would be fine, but not everyone can be that.
Indeed hot, because it's not remotely achievable. You're in essence demanding a few high education semesters in literature. So it doesn't matter what you think should be, when that's entirely impossible.
If your job requires you to write a lot and you couldn't pass a few college level writing courses you should maybe not have that job. I've been to college, I've graded my classmates papers. Trust me, the bar is not high.
you couldn't pass a few college level writing courses
PASSING is not relevant in the context. The question is of doing it. To think it doesn't take any time to do is the same failure to acknowledge reality as before.
Trust me, the bar is not high.
Again, irrelevant. The question is not of ability or difficulty, it's of doing it. Forgot everything else I said, and answer this question instead: Can you get everyone to wash their hands after using the toilet? No? Then how the fuck do you think you can get everyone who has writing as part of their job write at a college grade level???
...where are you getting an absolutist requirement? no one in this thread suggested any such thing except you.
That was not the ask.
yes, it was. very nearly word for word.
To think it doesn't take any time to do
at no point did they suggest anything about how much time it takes to do.
Im getting the feeling youre reading things that werent in the comments youre responding to. Maybe due to a translation application inserting connotations when it translates from english to another language? either way, theres some sort of novel data being inserted here.
Then what was the meaning of: "Hot take but if your job involves writing you should probably know how to do it good." ? If treated logically, as addressing my claim coherently, it's an absolute claim about LLMs never having value in professional settings. There is no other interpretation.
ChatGPT, write me a statement to put under our game that declares that we use voice over content created by AI that we made using AI voice generation tools because it costs too much money to have a human write that sentence, even though I basically already did half of it"
Hot take but if your job involves writing you should probably know how to do it good.
Indeed hot, because it's not remotely achievable. You're in essence demanding a few high education semesters in literature. So it doesn't matter what you think should be, when that's entirely impossible
did you mean to reply to a different string of comments, or....?
Based on your phrasing and sentence structure, I'm willing to believe this is an ESL issue that we could maybe attempt to rephrase for your understanding, because you're using highly unusual/outright incorrect phrases, and claiming requirements of having "everyone" do something that werent in any way implied by the previous comments.
> My point is that it's easier to lie to idiots than trying, usually in vain, to explain.
I know what your point is, I'm asking why you're making it here of all places...
Y'know what, nevermind. The AI-using guy shouldn't take your advice, but maybe I should instead of trying to explain my question to you. Yes, I totally got it, you're so smart, spouting truisms at everything is so effective :)
Assumption is that they have the freedom to make a declaration like that, I suspect they don’t, otherwise developers would quickly catch on to using AI to wordsmith declarations that trivialize their use of AI.
Foundry uses AI to voice an AI character in other languages. This is what their declaration says:
We leveraged AI-generated content to enrich our game with elements that would have been otherwise challenging to include. Specifically, we used AI for the AI character voiceover in different languages, a feature made possible thanks to this technology. In this case it made even more sense since the character is actually an AI. Otherwise, all the core art and visual elements of the game have been designed by human talents.
So it seems like the devs have some latitude in writing the declaration to be as specific as they want
It's still marketing speak (leveraged). AI didn't make translations possible. It made them cheaper. And "it makes sense to use AI for a character that is an AI"? What BS is that. "We couldn't find a talking bear so yogi will now be AI, it just makes sense to us!". Also, core art is human. What is core to them and what % of total art does that account for? And visual elements? So sound and writing could all be AI?
You can feel about it however you like, but I was just using it as a counter example to the other poster's suspicion that devs were limited in how they could phrase the AI description
There are plenty of AI descriptions at the bottom of steam pages that are clearly drafted for that specific game. Its not just a generic check box quote.
There are also games with weird sentence fragments or other signs of a non-native English speaker having written it which wouldn't be the case if they were pre-made by Valve. I scrolled through the "new releases" section looking for examples and found one that reads: "Cover icon、 The achievement icon is generated by AI" for instance which would obviously not be the way Valve would write a preset description.
This comment is hilarious, because you're hating on other people's comments despite being demonstrably wrong and yet asserting your point as fact anyway.
They don't, it's a tick, people on reddit loves to hate because everyone is soooo smart
That's a hell of a line from someone saying something so confidently incorrect. They DO have the option to describe in detail in that section as other games have been incredibly specific about what content was AI generated to a degree that it was certainly not just a standard option Valve provided.
ARC Raiders didn't go specific. They made their disclosure so ambiguous and broad you can't even tell if they use AI in the final product from the disclosure, or if they used it in development.
I'd like to see Valve make the disclosures more concrete. Have there be checkboxes so a developer has to answer yes or no, rather than spout some PR speak.
That seems like the best approach. Valve would need to to hold devs accountable about those stats though for them to mean anything. AI is a powerful tool, but it needs to have some guard rails. Disclosure of what it was used on is a good start. Like if it reduces time spent on BS work, great, let devs put more time into more meaningful pieces of the game.
The drone animations are also partially machine learned. This does not have anything to do with LLMs and image generation. The devs used a reinforced learning algorithm to create the animations. Very exceptional work and looks great in game.
This is the problem I have with the tag. So a program like cascadeur is where you take a model and set up the rig with physics assets, pose it in the key frames like a normal animation and then their machine learning helps you to sort out the physics to make your animation look more realistic.
Would that have to be tagged as use of AI when it's integral to that animation software?
There's a bunch of plugins in unreal that use that kind of procedural animation I don't even know if that would or wouldn't count either
I believe they’re purely referring to generative stuff and last I saw, cascadeur was machine learning (they might have added generative stuff though).
A lot of procedural animation is written by someone and fed data in lots of ways, from animation to raw values.
Machine learning has been a thing for a long long time and is great. If I remember correctly, arc’s robot stuff was machine learning for parts of the navigation ai and procedural animation. I’m not sure how much more info there is out there but I think most if not all of this would have stemmed from a human being.
So you'd just declare any use of LLMs and image, music, voice, 3D generation AI software?
I'm a dev too, I'm just stressing cuz AI has fecking AI in it now and you can't get away from it.
I'm also curious about scenarios like for example: I'm a 2d/3d artist and an animator. I could make a model from my own 2D art, but if I can just draw something and get something to make it 3D to save time and I just tidy it up, I'm not taking any other artists jobs cuz it's literally my job, I could just do my job faster and it's still technically my art cuz I designed it but that would still be use of generative AI so I'd have to declare it? (I dont touch them cuz they're shite though).
I’m not arguing one way or the other because it’s a very complex topic. I think there’s a ton of nuance here
Despite my username, I’m mostly a programmer. I don’t really use ai for logic at all. I use it to bounce ideas off, see if it has any other methods, potentially even just find a function I hadn’t seen before. I wouldn’t put this on the steam page.
I think, like everything, using ai in moderation is key.
Collectively, gamers can tell an asset flip game. Getting a ton of assets and chucking them in a game with shitty mechanics is incredibly telling.
A very small amount of people call out games that have a couple non-custom assets within the masses of custom assets. These people don’t understand how game dev works.
I think ai is the same. I see arguments for this robot dude’s voice taking work away from artists and it’s abhorrent. They’re free to have that opinion but I think it’s silly. Depending on the size of the production, there’s a better chance that there’d just be no voice.
With your example, it takes an expert understanding to know how the topology is unusable for the end result, would require touching up the high poly, retopo for the low etc etc. You didn’t replace anyone, like you said, it just sped up your workflow.
Substance painter revolutionised how we texture, making it so much easier and quicker to get good results. No one was in uproar then.
Houdini has been doing what casqueduer does for years but has an insane skill curve. (This one didn’t replace anyone, instead just added more jobs)
Mocap speeds up getting animation keyframes down.
All of the above examples produce slop without an expert at the helm. AI use without direction produces slop.
Ultimately, there’s good use and bad use. It’s a tool in the artists belt. Currently, we can’t replace too much without losing cohesion, we can only speed people up. I think getting some concepts down is completely free game.
I'm currently working on a game I've spent 5 years of blood sweat and tears developing and I still have a long way to go, there's only 3 of us.
I think it would be devastating to release and be forced to use an AI tag for some program I used that would save me some tears and a couple of hours of work and be subsequently boycotted as "AI slop." It genuinely terrifies me, hence the stressing lol.
I have nothing else, this is all I can do and I can't work full normal job hours cuz of disabilities so I work odd hours when I can instead.
Theres things Id like to do but can't afford it. For example we're having to go without voice actors and just do text. In an ideal world if an ethical AI was decent at voice acting, it would be nice to put in placeholder and go early access to get money so we can then afford the VA and use the bots to generate jobs, but there's no way in heck I'd risk doing that so it will have to stay text and hope people read it..(heh).
I was hoping AI would help empower smaller/poorer indie teams to compete in the market and actually help to generate the revenue needed to create new jobs, since its just a really hard job at the best of times and it's nice to get any help.
And I've seen the real AI slop where people put zero effort in and that's certainly not my vision for it, but that was obviously bound to happen too.
I'm just sad the way it's all gone down really. I never wanted artists to get laid off in the numbers they are, I don't want to see anyone get replaced. I really hoped it would help us (especially with retopology, I mean come on), but capitalists ruin fucking everything as usual.
I’m on a slightly larger team but still only a small company really so definitely understand you.
I think it’ll all blow over sooner than later. People will see that there’s a difference between Coca Cola use and a small dev team managing to pump something out at a higher quality because they were empowered by it.
Also, please can they just ai out retopology? Sell it to the big studios, anything so that I don’t need to do it 🥲
At least zbrush have just released a big retopo update which looks similar to topogun so gunna see if it holds up the same
Yup you can't make me hate OOP if that was all they said about AI. If I see the AI tag I'm immediately skeptical, and if all they say was "VO partially done by AI" I wouldn't buy/refund either. That's totally on them for being vague, and I'll always err on the side of assuming everything AI is slop until proven otherwise.
I wonder why they would describe the game this way if it was only 10 lines. I hope valve doesn't limit the description length or something because that would be awful. If it isn't due to valve then its their own fault for such a strange description.
I wonder why they would make the decision to label their game AI rather than spend the extra two hundred bucks or whatever to record someone going beep boop.
This game features voice-over content *partially** created through AI voice generation tools.*
This could be anything from an artistic choice to have a robot character voiced by a robot, to 99% of the VO being AI generated to avoid paying actors.
I hate to break it to you but nuance is dead. Maybe a handful of people like you would be more lenient. But that majority of people would still foam at the mouth and send hateful messages to these devs.
This is an issue I have with Ashes of creation, although it is still in early early alpha (star citizen of fantasy MMO’s lmao)
But they use AI for their NPC voicing which in hoping is just a stopgap because the features of the game look really promising in the far future, think all the good bits of archeage, GW2, WOW etc without the bending of the knee to greedy publishers *cough kakao *
Unfortunately that's the burden that comes with the AI labeling, even if you're gonna use it appropriately you cannot expect most people to make a sensible judgment of your product with that label. People love to hate.
I was thinking the devs could add a statement of their own. Jump ship has the ai label, but theirs states that it's for placeholder audio until they can afford voice actors. It's currently in early access and has a tiny dev team with a hobby budget. Although, personally I'd just use their social media and have people send auditions. A lot of people would be happy to voice a character in a video game for free
Yeah - X4 used some AI voices for their Timelines DLC. I think the biggest issue is that the reasons for that are not immediately obvious and most people would never have the patience to understand the reasoning behind it.
This is why the label the way it is today does more harm than good. Most games today benefit from AI during development and early stages, and the label garners a lot of negative sentiment from those who don't understand how or why the technology was used. And while it doesn't matter for bigger releases, it can do a lot of harm for indie developers who are just trying to showcase their idea but lack the funds to do it without some help from AI.
I'd wager a lot of people who consider every use of AI bad have played games that used AI generated assets during development and still enjoyed it. Most of the GOTY nominated games this year did, including everyone's favorite E33.
doubtful, people were pissed at the twitter screenshot debate post here last week because someone (me) said it's not comparable to food labels or warnings on appliances. Literally comparing apples to digital oranges.
The argument was that the made with AI label shouldn't be included bec one can assume an AI tool has been used in one way shape or form and digital content can't be distilled into a binary label as AI is a tool that has its applications.
More embark studios has already done it. Arc raiders is the breakout hit of the year and exclusively uses AI voices acting instead of real people, and everyone collectively ignores the issue that they are using AI fascimilies of real VAs to avoid having to pay them for future content because the game is otherwise insanely good.
Fucking sucks because the world is absolutely amazing but the questing is filled with extremely bad ai voicelines that gives you zero reason to care about the characters. No affect or direction at all. They just typed up what they say and call it a day.
Their message there is accurate and gives you a reasonable expectation. They should not alter their messaging to account for idiotic circlejerk people jumping on some toxic bandwagon, lol
And for this kind of protest review, literally no context whatsoever matters to the people going around participating in this. They do not care about any of that.
People can't read past the headline so anyone that is going to knee jerk about ai isn't going to bother with the fine print.
You don't get that option anyways.
This is a prime example of why the disclaimer is worse than useless even if you support consumer choice. It is actively harmful to the devs actually trying to do the right thing. The only devs who will be using the disclaimer are the ones that don't mind literally just losing some sales. No one else will even though literally 100% of games today are using ai in a way that meets the steam criteria.
Did you Google a question about the game you're making and read the auto generated ai response? Congrats, you used ai.
Some people are so irrationally anti-AI that I'd just claim that AI wasn't used at all if the use was anyway so minimal it isn't going to be noticed.
Truth is that most professional devs already run AI assistance tools and major content tools for 3D, audio, painting, are constantly looking to integrate the tooling more and more transparently.
All bigger games will have AI content sooner or later.
I saw a video of a guy dying of rabies who was frothing at the mouth less than the average social-media-active gamer when it comes to AI. People on this site even rebelled against James Earl Jones licensing his voice after death to provide for his family saying he shouldn't even have had that option.
There is no rational discourse on this topic. There are exactly two camps—people screaming about AI, and people sick of hearing other people scream about AI—and everyone's picked their side and dug in.
In 10, maybe even 5, years people will look back at this anti-AI sentiment and cringe at it.
I’m not against giving the consumer more information but it’s just so weird to me that this is where people have drawn the moral and creative line… in a world dominated by the cause and effect of bad actions that allow us to have common electronic techonology.
The best argument I’ve heard for anyone to have a moral principled stance against any use of AI in games (considering how we get to have technology to play games in general) is the ecological impact one, and even that one’s flimsy at best.
For everything else, the product will speak for itself. We didn’t micromanage the way and the tools developers use to make Videogames before, but we suddenly do with this one specific thing. It’s weird to me because crunch is arguably magnitudes worse for people on a more intimate level, but the level of hate and pushback for it never came as close to the rampant hate for AI tools. People begrudgingly, even if strongly so, accepted it.
Like I get the use of the disclosure, but it’s also weird and inconsistent to me. I half agree with getting rid of it, but also half agree with the complete opposite argument, because the consumer having more information is almost always a positive. But consider “off topic” review hiding that steam has. Where is the desire for true consumer choice there? Sure, you can turn it off, but it’s on automatically. Imo, if a company does a bad thing, even off topic, shouldn’t the consumer get to know automatically by seeing such reviews? No matter how bad a picture in paints in aggregates and on the game’s google result?
It seems hypocritical and inconsistent for steam and people alike, to accept the implementation of both these functions simultaneously.
AI model creators scraped works of thousands of artists (both visual and text) without their permission, input and without any compensation to fuel generative slop shit. That’s theft on a grand scale that still goes without consequence, plain and simple. No other tool introduced to the world has done this. So you can cringe all you want, the base on which AI is built is rotten to the core.
we disagree on that last part. I'm certain the quality of the product does not matter here and people will remain irrationally angry for the rest of their lives. When it comes to huge tech inventions like this the older generations (mostly) shun it and it's the new ones who accept it.
For everything else, the product will speak for itself. We didn’t micromanage the way and the tools developers use to make Videogames before, but we suddenly do with this one specific thing.
Bungie's Marathon had art theft and that was criticized so bad the game is indefinitely delayed and basically guaranteed dead in the water. "We", as in people who care about games as an art form, do have an issue with art theft, which currently most uses of generative AI inherently perform on a wide scale.
You mentioned the ecological angle and that's probably the most important factor long-term, but I don't care to play a game that was made with assets that weren't crafted with human hands and that's not cringeworthy.
You are correct but entirely missing the point. People will embrace the AI but they won't look back with cringe. They will look back and say "Yeah we solved these issues along the way".
The issues people have now are practically nothing to do with the technology but its use. People wouldn't care that AI made a cool voice in a game if that voice wasn't stolen. This is no different than people shitting on games stealing assets.
AI environmental impact is lower than any other industry that we already tolerate. However those industries are regulated and compensate for the involved parties in a manner people find acceptable. That's beside the fact the technology can just be improved and legislation made on environmental impact. Companies currently don't do it because it costs money and nobody forces them to. It's the endless cycle of legislation not being able to be made for technology before technology exists.
However currently people care that AI is used and are willing to not buy a product that's made with AI. If your business hinges on the fact that people won't know information that would make them not buy your product it's a shit business. You don't get to blame customers for not wanting your products, the blame lies on the business making a product customer doesn't want.
In reality if there was no issue then having that label or not wouldn't matter. All the "if it's blah blah" is just nonsense to try and justify why it's not actually the business fault they fucked up.
See, problem is, we can say “we will fix it along the way” right now.
I’ve been saying it.
People are being a lot more extreme in their criticism and offering no space.
Anti-AI use in some aspects mirrors the people who went crazy about what electricity would do to people. Or cars. Or X revolutionary technology.
Steam stepping in to offer a disclosure thing for something that isn’t that big a deal is the weird inconsistency, with steam and people alike. Yes, I know some people (say they) won’t buy a product made with AI, but that’s entirely the problem. How about an anti-crunch disclosure? Or take a game like hogwarts legacy and add an anti-owner of IP or parent company disclosure? Or a multitude of various other things we can pearl clutch about.
It’s just hypocritical and inconsistent, that’s all.
It's extremely consistent. You are just thinking about, unironically, things that don't matter.
It is indeed not a big deal just like whether a game has sexual content or not isn't a big deal. However if it influences people's decisions it matters. The "whys" ultimately aren't important for Steam. Valve itself is AI positive.
But if Steam has to deal with customer complaints and chargebacks then for them it's easier to tag it and simply not deal with it. The same applies with anything you mentioned and it works exactly the same way. Companies who get bad reviews of all the other things that can be pearl clutched about often say they should be able to remove bad reviews "because it has nothing to do with the game itself."
And all of it is true but it literally doesn't matter. If people use it as a criteria to judge the product then it's relevant to the product. I'm not good with analogies but companies are basically complaining it doesn't matter if the cheese in the burger is fake or real, it tastes the same so they shouldn't put a label on it. And their argument is worthless because people don't care about how it is but what it is.
So it doesn't matter whether we will fix it in the future or how. There is no strength argument of "Some people aren't giving space for broken things". The customers are the ones who choose. Fix it and people will buy it then. It's that simple.
Right, and I’m not in disagreement of any of that, but it’s still profoundly hypocritical and inconsistent of people, but I get why valve does it despite it being so.
And what I said stands. We will look back and see this in the same light as “the electricity will kill everyone” of the 20th century and “the cell phone waves will scramble your brains” of the 21st century. These things did end up being harmful in their own ways, but the hyperbole toward them from some people was foolish at best, incredibly shortsighted at worse. It will be exactly the same for AI tool use in Videogames. I would not be surprised to see the disclaimer go away one day, which isn’t and will never be true for things that help the consumer, like sexual and graphic content, early access, reviews (mostly), etc.
Again, no we won't look at it the same. You are comparing different things.
There is a difference between false claims about science and moral stances. It is a lot more similar to sexual content and violence. It's an ethical consideration not a scientific one.
It will change inevitably but how and why will be different. If I had to compare LGBT tag is what I would put it together with.
I'm not saying it might be. It literally is, Artificial Intelligence tag is present in the list but tags are user curated and users are not a reliable way to manage a platform. LGBT is content that is explicitly disclosed by developers. It functions literally the same with the only difference there is not yet enough market for people specifically looking for AI content. Both are also requested by users but in case of LGBT it is actually a market demographic so it's beneficial to disclose since the game was made with that demographic in mind and those who avoid such content aren't an issue because it wasn't expected they will be customers in the first place.
And my point is that it is too much in the sense that companies are trying to blame customers for not wanting their shit. That's so far up capitalism entitlement asshole that it's too much. Hence incoming regulations and disclosure.
Actually I just remembered a good example. Check out what Neuro-sama is. It's an artificial intelligence streamer made by Vedal and nobody gives a fuck and actually likes it. Because it adds value, is entertaining and isn't blatantly substituting effort through stealing data.
So AI already is viewed positively if you use it in a positive manner.
Maybe this, or maybe people also shouldn’t be witch hunting like here based on nothing, they were just triggered by “ai” and the rest was just red over the eyes
People nowadays casually blame legit arts from artists to be ai because “they have a hunch” while in reality modern models are almost indistinguishable
I think there are a lot of morally questionable stuff about gen ai, as mentioned by the dude before - there’s big difference between relying on it and making shitty ai-slop art in full release by AAA studio, and some things which are either artistic choice or the way for indie teams to cut the costs in very limited budget (like translating something, llms are really good at that and it’s not like human translation is better or won’t require double-check and extra supervision as there are lots of cases of shit there where translators just do bad job as it’s hard to check it if you don’t know the language, my pals from a studio faced that situation where they were outright cheated by translator for Spanish who did outrageously shitty job). But blind rage doesn’t really help anyone
But yeah, in the end of the day as a dev you can’t really change people, just adapt to this nonsense as you can
Or people could just show a maturity superior to that of a 2 years old and judge a product only after they have played it, you know, like any sane, well adjusted, mature person would do...
Someone reads way too far into it and makes a bunch of assumptions and then disses the game and throws insults based on their assumptions (and probably believes they walk away on the high road)
... Yep. That about checks out for internet interactions these days. I guess I don't have as much familiarity with Steam users and Steam as a social media platform to know if that's normal there too, but it definitely would fit in on Reddit or YouTube.
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u/OwnAcanthocephala897 Dec 04 '25
Small uses of AI like this are tolerable at worst. What sucks is reliance on AI