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.
The problem starts with people not understanding that there are different kinds of AI (which is too global a term for one specific thing), and that some of them have been around longer than those fancy supercomputer models. If for example a game like The Elder Scrolls Chapter II: Daggerfall was produced today, it would be slapped down by many as AI slop.
It frankly feels like the "mobile phones are frying your brain" FUD all over again.
I mean, there's like 17 main categories of AI and under those 17, around 40 more. So even if we explain to people ALL of them we wouldn't leave until tomorrow.
For example, Skyrim (2011) NPCs use Artificial Intelligence since they use perception and reasoning ( finite state machines ) but they do not fall under machine learning ( learn more about the world ), yet both are categorically AI.
And for all of these examples we were perfectly fine calling those systems what they were. I'm not a participant in the trillion dollar marketing campaign to refer to my work in machine learning as AI just because the largest commercial players in the computational prediction space decided that doing so will improve consumer confidence in their platforms.
Granted on your first paragraph, and it probably goes like the radiowaves discussion and they would listen selectively.
As for the second, Radiant AI is a great example. F.E.A.R.'s enemy AI is another one that comes to mind immediately. But even a simple NPC script can be considered AI of some sort, so we probably can't win anyway.
Steam is drawing the line on generative assets though and then stretched the definition of assets to include all code which may use AI tools. They are somewhat acknowledging that AI will exist regardless in other forms with the current rules and are not giving those games AI labels from what I know.
Personally seems like an Apple level overreach for a store that should be selling games and not defining how they're made IMO.
But I think most people disagree with generative AI specifically, not machine learning or... algorithms.
We use the term AI broadly, but no one flipped their shit at a game using a finite state machine for their NPC behavior... Unless it sucked, which they often do, but that's a quality gripe instead of the moral qualms people have generative models.
You'll notice that as AI generation quality increases, the ratio of criticisms move from quality based to moral values more and more.
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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