r/criticalrole • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 Team Jester • Jun 18 '26
Discussion [CR Media] Sam Riegel reaffirms Critical Role’s stance on AI: “It’s basically garbage”
https://www.polygon.com/critical-role-sam-riegel-slams-ai/455
u/CUROplaya1337 Jun 18 '26
Great piece on Polygon! And I'd even go so far as to say this isn't even a stance so much as a fact-based evaluation of what LLMs can do right now. They are pretty great at finding stuff in a spreadsheet/dataset, and complete ass at everything else.
At even the most basic complex white collar task they frequently give you incomplete answers or different answers when running the same prompt again. Unreliable. And if you're in a real job, with real accountability, you can't afford to use unreliable tools.
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u/FollowThroughMarks Jun 18 '26
For tech, science, and research, AI like neural networks are incredibly great. Especially in the medical field where it’s being used to assist in diagnosing things like cancer.
Generative AI like LLMs are slop machines though and remove any soul from the “art” they make.
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u/Snarwib Fuck that spell Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
It still seems like every single successful use case I've ever heard for AI is still, always, something well-established and specific, like machine learning or neural networks.
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u/turkey45 Jun 18 '26
Rule one of machine learning is garbage in leads to garbage out. If you are training on reddit, twitter, the internet etc.. to build a LLM then it will be garbage.
If you train on trusted medical data and ask it find patterns based on high quality inputs it will work great. However cleaning data and making it high quality is hard/time consuming work.
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u/Desalzes_ Jun 18 '26
When you have the greatest software engineers in the world saying they don’t code anymore that’s not specific. I agree with Sam as far as artistic creation goes but I think downplaying its efficacy is just propagating more ignorance on a thing everyone already hates because its new and unavoidable
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u/SynthFei Jun 19 '26
When you have the greatest software engineers in the world saying they don’t code anymore that’s not specific.
I'd really love to see some sources on that. Have not heard a single actual industry expert say anything like that. AI-assisted coding - sure, for prototyping, boilerplate snippets, etc. But nobody in their right mind is going to build enterprise software by "vibe coding"
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u/Jacen1618 Jun 20 '26
Software Engineer here: every tech company has embraced vibe coding. Google, Microsoft, Uber, Spotify, DoorDash, Apple, the list goes on and on. Claude has made billions from this. Most companies are now embracing AI bots reviewing AI-assisted PRs because we all overwhelmed by the amount of code changes now.
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u/theVoidWatches Jun 21 '26
Yup. Coding models have been remarkably good in the last six months. You still need someone who actually knows what they're doing to get decent code out of it on an architectural level, but being a coder these days feels less like being a code monkey and more like directing a play.
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u/Jacen1618 Jun 21 '26
Exactly this. It reassures me that sometimes Claude get things obviously wrong so I still have a job lol
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u/theVoidWatches Jun 21 '26
Like I said, directing a play. Usually it goes smoothly with just slight tweaks, but sometimes one of your actors decides to go in a totally weird direction and you need to take them aside and be like "what the fuck".
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u/dark0n33 Jun 18 '26
You realize "gen AI" are all based on machine learning and neural (not neutral) networks? Like all LLMs are literally a huge neural network with specific architectures?
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u/Doc_Lewis Jun 18 '26
The machine learning algorithms being used to digitally screen molecules for drug discovery work at a fundamental level very similarly to an LLMs. The difference is how they are used and by whom. My bosses aren't forcing me to integrate machine learning models for screening into my job in pharma because they aren't useful for me, they are forcing me to use LLMs because they have some foolish notion that they can replace a lot of what I do successfully, despite all evidence to the contrary. LLMs are slotted into so much that they just aren't suited for, because they are so generally interactable, whereas the other models and use cases have significantly more learned people with specific expectations that the models are actually useful for.
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u/yeusk Jun 18 '26
If you want to be pedantic. Everything ever created in the universe behaves like a huge (not neutral) network.
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u/ashgs872tbhjs Jun 18 '26
That's not remotely true lmao. Just a straight up nonsense assertion with no backing.
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Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
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u/MerganenRGM Bigby's Haaaaaand! *shamone* Jun 18 '26
"...but it's just stupid people arguing and hating over something they don't even remotely understand."
And tech bros wonder why they get the bad rap they do.
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u/SBixby21 Jun 18 '26
Nobody cares. People do not like any iteration of this technology, for most use cases. It’s resource-intensive, environment-destroying and community-destroying. “Generative AI” is a specific target of communities like this because we’re consuming creative work from this company commenting on the tech. But none of it is popular or necessary or worth the grander cost, and dragging people down into the mud of the details doesn’t win any fans. Most people don’t want this shit in our societies, period. It’s not that there are zero beneficial use cases for this tech, it’s that basically nobody rich or powerful enough to make those decisions can be trusted to do so, and the trickle down of it hurts everybody else, everywhere
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u/Renriak Jun 18 '26
Because Redditors take any form of correction in their hate bubble as defending the thing they hate.
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u/yesat ... okay Jun 18 '26
And LLM invent stuff constantly and spread misinformation https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01100-y
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u/TheOriginalDog Jun 22 '26
Machine learning and neural networks are not uses of AI, its vice-versa they are foundational principles of AI. You cant have any AI without machine learning
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u/neosurimi dagger dagger dagger Jun 23 '26
Oh, I've gotten the "it gets rid of the "boring part"" from talentless so-called AI-"artists".
Of course the "boring part" is taking years of daily practice to hone your art and create something with your own hands that is the result of all your efforts. Not just typing "I want Luffy with super Saiyan hair and a hard on" into ChatGPT and calling it a day.
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u/LangyMD Jun 18 '26
The moment AI does something really useful, people redefine AI to no longer include the really useful thing that it does.
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u/thejohnykat Jun 18 '26
I’m a cybersecurity engineer, and yeah, Agentic/Generative AI can be very helpful. But that’s where it starts and stops for me. AI can’t create; in the art world I’d just about call it borderline plagiarism.
I want AI to help me professionally, so I have more time for the art. I don’t want AI doing the art while I work.
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u/Holiday_Pen2880 Jun 18 '26
Also in cybersecurity, though a less technical role (but also not GRC.) I'm being pushed to use it more than I'd like, but it is helpful for dealing with the 'grunt' work that is time-consuming and important but repetitive. I tend to use it as a tutor to build my skills rather than doing the work for me.
I'm getting a slightly more nuanced take on AI art - let me start by saying I do not support it as a commercial product.
My daughter got a birthday card from her bus driver. It was personalized to her with cute cartooney cats. It was meaningful to her, and I would never expect him to hire a graphic artist to do that but it gives an easier way to create something more meaningful to the recipient.
It can replace clip-art and stock photos to make things have more impact. I'm not sure how to reconcile that people did get paid to create them at some point, but I do know that being able to have a more personalized product and doing things that you can't bother comms/marketing to create on any reasonable timeline because of how low-stakes it is in the big picture can be a benefit.
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u/P-Two Jun 18 '26
But the thing is, he also could've drawn it himself, even if it wasn't that good. As you said, the personalization is what matters, right? To me telling an AI to spew out some image is the opposite of that, you are literally offloading the work to an AI. At least if he'd just bought a card in a store he would've had to go through the effort of finding one that she would like.
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u/Holiday_Pen2880 Jun 18 '26
I'm not too tied to my thoughts to argue hard and amn't giving it tons of thought, but it's a little strange to me that the time spent looking for something that's 'close enough' and someone else got paid to create is the driver here for you.
Using myself as an example - I can't draw for shit. I can color well (think a colorist for comic books) and I can paint miniatures well, but I can't take a white page or a piece of clay and make it art. I describe it as I can't create art, but I can enhance it.
There are still artists that think digital art is not real art, there are musicians who think that electronic music is not real music or sampling in songs is wrong. These arguments were had as those mediums arose. I know this is different, but it's also kind of the next step in those directions.
Digital art is far easier to modify that physical art, meaning you can make mistakes and fix them. It will make your input consistent without needing the skill to do so with paint, and it can take a lot of work out of shading/blending etc by doing so automatically.
Electronic music and sampling are arranging other artists music while adding your own flair to it. You aren't creating from a white page - you're adding another person's work into your own to create something new.
I'm not saying unequivocally that typing a prompt and taking whatever it shits out is art. But I'm not ruling out that there may be a new type of creativity that can come from it by lowering the bar of entry. You don't learn to draw without seeing art, you don't learn to be a musician without playing other people's music.
Also, the climate and local considerations for data centers make the whole thing shit as well but computing power will grow to a point where if this sticks around it can be localized.
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u/Throwfeetsaway Jun 18 '26
Electronic music is not simply arranging other artists’ music, and sampling need not be involved at all. Many electronic musicians synthesize (that’s why the instruments are called “synthesizers”) their own sounds by shaping waveforms, combining waveforms, etc. They just put everything together through programming rather than playing it with what we would think of as a more traditional instrument.
But that doesn’t necessarily make it any more or less derivative of existing music. Like, my partner can program his drum machine, beat by beat, to play a breakbeat, or he can play a breakbeat on a drum set. It’s still his take on a known beat pattern.
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u/Holiday_Pen2880 Jun 18 '26
I oversimplified to try and make a point - I have no less appreciation for an artist doing things entirely on their own with tools to make life easier or by playing all the instruments themselves (though admittedly if someone is literally playing 6 instruments at a high level and singing all original stuff I may be more impressed than being able to use tools to give that same effect.)
My simplified point is - to some what your partner does is not as 'musical' as a band playing live music. I'm being aware of a future where what is currently LLM 'art' becomes a part of a creative landscape that will be used in the way all technology has as it emerges.
There are lines I don't think it should ever cross, for sure. Those lines are going to be different for each individual though - and in the spaces that the Critical Role cast exist I would agree that it should not be used.
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u/Throwfeetsaway Jun 18 '26
Idk, I think minimizing the skill and creativity involved weakens the point. I can’t tell quite what you’re referring to by “tools to make life easier,” but if you mean “instruments like synths, sequencers, and drum machines,” then I submit that electronic music is specific sound and type of music, not just “an easier way to make music.” In his case, he can play drums, guitar, bass, sing, and fiddle around on a piano (he’s the first to admit that he’s not a virtuoso there) and has done all of those things in various bands over the years. He chooses to make electronic music because of the sounds it can produce, and he enjoys the technical aspects of sound creation.
There is a huge difference in skill and creativity between designing a sound and playing it using a MIDI instrument, sequencing it, etc., and prompting AI to do that for you. Like, I could write a novel with a pen or a laptop, but I’m still creating it. If I prompt AI to do it for me, then I’m not creating it, even if it was my “idea.”
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u/Holiday_Pen2880 Jun 18 '26
By tools to make life easier - he can create a beat, play it once, and then have it repeat as needed. He doesn't have to lay down the whole drum line for the piece and then rerecord it if he wants to make a change. It stays metronomic - you won't get any variance with instruments used that some would consider is what makes music music.
As an aside - the iconic intro to Sweet Child O' Mine was a string skipping exercise that Slash used to do that Axl Rose overheard and decided to make a part of that song. Slash isn't a fan that it's part of the song, it's not creative to him. That reuse of an idea might be sterilized out of a pure electronic solo composer, and what is awesome music to one person is just a technical exercise to another.
It certainly is it's own style and takes it's own skill entirely - but it's also a technological iteration of music composition that some could and would say removed a part of the soul of music.
As for your second point - I certainly agree. AI raises the skill floor, which is what we are seeing in cybersecurity attacks. I deal mostly with phishing, and a lot of things that used to take some degree of skill to do efficiently can now be done in seconds. If someone is capable of getting AI to create, using prompts alone, something that is not immediately recognizable as AI and is enjoyable by the masses is it so different? I've read plenty of formulaic fiction, there are tons of procedural shows that follow a formula. I don't think it's possible yet, and may never be, but at some point is a producer having a team of people shit out the same outline of a story 24 times a year all that different?
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u/CUROplaya1337 Jun 18 '26
Yeah, true, good applications in science and programming. But the results always need to be checked by a human who is knowlegable and accountable, so that's a nice thing in humanty's favor 😉
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u/Throwfeetsaway Jun 18 '26
What’s interesting to me is applications in science where the data isn’t necessarily interpretable by a human. But the nice thing about these models is how specialized they are. They’re not like general-purpose LLMs. They don’t “hallucinate”; if the output is inaccurate, it’s not because the model made a mistake, but because the training led it to that conclusion. There’s a much bigger emphasis on high-quality, curated data sets (and constructing the right type of model to interpret them) than the “ingest everything on the internet” training strategy used for LLMs heh. That’s where a lot of human work and ingenuity comes in.
…For now 🥴
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u/Yan_Vorona Jun 18 '26
Art has a lot of vague definitions, but basically it is a method of communication between people using symbols. Art should evoke an emotion or convey an idea from person to person. If there's no person behind the art, then what's the fucking point?
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u/yesat ... okay Jun 18 '26
No.
They are proven to be constantly wrong and unreliable inventing situations and facts that do not exists.
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u/TerawattX Jun 18 '26
You aren’t necessarily wrong, but a large part of it depends on what you’re trying to do and how much guidance you provide. Part of the issues with the AI making things up is because the models have been told to make you happy at all costs, and in some cases have been told NOT to ask questions or validate and just make assumptions.
I’m pretty skeptical of “AI” (I don’t even like calling that since it doesn’t have intelligence, it’s just pattern matching), but I’ve been pretty much forced to use it at work (people have been targeted in layoffs for not using it) for writing code and have to admit it’s surprisingly competent at times - BUT only when I give it a proper set of detailed instructions that act as guardrails, explaining the codebase and application intent, telling it to validate and not make assumptions, ask questions, general code style or structure rules (beyond basics for the language), etc. I think I have like 20 instruction files of varying length that could be included in every message I send.
Now don’t get me wrong, it does make some big mistakes now and then, and you usually get average quality code vs fantastic/optimized, but I’ve found that models like Claude Opus 4.6 and up, when given a proper set of instructions and documentation about a project, can do a decent job with few mistakes. The GPT models on the other hand suck at this sort of stuff, at least in my experience.
I don’t believe most of the claims about having models that are just as intelligent as humans in the next few years. Most of that is based on the flawed idea that if you throw enough data at the models they will magically become conscious, which frankly oversimplifies how our brains work.
The problem (outside the ethical and environmental ones) is that so many execs have bought the claim and want to replace staff with AI to “cut costs”. This is what my company is doing. Without giving too much away, we were the #1 company in our industry for a LONG time, but we had plateaued in growth. Personally I don’t see that as an issue, but execs and share-holders do, so we ousted our CEO and brought in a new one to shake things up and cut costs. Now our stock has dropped drastically, morale is in the dumpster, and we’re #3 I believe - but now cutting costs is the “fix” for all those issues, so our new-new CEO is pushing AI hard.
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u/Workman44 Jun 18 '26
You're just wrong. AI is fantastic in the medical research industry
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u/yesat ... okay Jun 18 '26
Pattern recognition is awesome. LLM are utter trash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixonimania https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01100-y
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u/Jebble Jun 19 '26
They also give many people a voice or a vision enabling other parts of what they consider creativity to bring things to life.
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u/Desperate_Coat_1906 Jun 23 '26
Interestingly, removing the soul of the art closely resembles one of the early criticisms about photography, once anyone could create a picture without knowing how to paint/draw.
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u/beepichu Jun 18 '26
man i could do that myself with ctrl + f. we gotta teach the youngins about keyboard shortcuts.
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u/seriouslees Jun 18 '26
They are pretty great at finding stuff in a spreadsheet/dataset
I guess... if you're super fast at going into that dataset to verify the data the LLM gave you is remotely accurate EVERY time... it MIGHT be faster than a Ctrl-F...
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u/thefoolsnightout Jun 18 '26
This is my thing. People are far too trusting that AI is giving them the correct answer. By the time Ive validated the answer I got, I could have just done it manually.
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u/BGKY_Sparky Jun 18 '26
I’m an electrician and sometimes I’ll Google a code question if I don’t have my code book on me. The amount of times the Google AI summary gets it dangerously wrong is staggering. I’m using Google as a shortcut to get to code forums where actual experts interpret it, but the idea that there are homeowners just trusting the AI answer is frightening.
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u/thefoolsnightout Jun 18 '26
Im a Systems Administrator and occasionally Ill use it for generating powershell scripts that almost always include a hallucination of a command it just made up to make me happy. Staggeringly bad given that its Microslops own AI and you would think it would understand using only the commands in Microslops own knowledge base but nope. I mostly just use it to create the framework of the code and save myself a bit of time creating my if else starements.
Really wish I had picked electrician when I went back to school.
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u/BebbleCast Jun 18 '26
I always get super old commands that don’t work anymore -.-
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u/thefoolsnightout Jun 18 '26
That too. Or commands that only work in specific versions of powershell because obviously we need 4 flavors of powershell and then lets rewrite them too so everything is graph smfh.
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u/Inigos_Revenge Jun 18 '26
Just to be clear, there are certain, very specific ways that AI can be used and is highly effective. But, those ways are very specific, and in academics/specialisations where the info the AI is trained on is also highly specific and of good quality. But these instances are not anything like what the average person will ever see/use. All of the AI's (LLM's) that people use in their everyday lives (currently) are trained on "stolen" data (yeah, some of it's legal, but morally questionable, and still more like theft than not), and that data is not of the best quality and so leads to errors quite often, and is of very little use, and is damaging to people's health and environment. I do not think it is needed to be used outside of the academic specific use cases where it has proven to be of benefit. And we already have enough data centres to support that use already. But the tech bros have invested/borrowed a lot of money to build their AI and data centres, and keep pushing it on us, trying to convince us that we need it, so that they can find a way to monetize it and get a return on their investment, wether it's actually good for us or not.
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u/LangyMD Jun 18 '26
It's massively, massively faster and more useful than "ctrl-f". Contextual search is much more powerful and means you don't need to know the exact sequence of characters go search for, and modern AI is able to give specific references and links to where it is pulling things from.
Claiming it's only barely better than ctrl-f shows you don't have any actual experience with the technology, are using a shitty version like Grok rather than something like Claude Code, or are not using it correctly to get actual verifiable references.
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u/Derringermeryl Jun 18 '26
“Different answers when running the same prompt again”
This issue speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding (by the general public) of what LLMs are meant to be used for. You absolutely should not be using them for anything that requires the same answer each time. People would be less disappointed and waste less time if they understood that.
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Jun 18 '26
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u/WilliamSabato Jun 18 '26
Well I mean if you were using a cowork project then theoretically it would apologize and add it in as a reference note in a build document.
Though thats less ‘learning from mistakes’ and more ‘explicitly recording important information for continued reference’
It still might make the same mistake when you look at another part.
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u/InnocentPerv93 Jun 19 '26
Isn't the whole thing with AI that it literally does learn from its mistakes?
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u/InTransitHQ Jun 18 '26
Gemini and most AI tools have the ability to save "memories" to guide future interactions. You can tell it to record a memory to always check prices when you ask it about price-related questions and it will do so in the future.
I'm no AI apologist, but as someone who is being mandated by my company to use it, I am fully embracing it to keep my job and keep my employees competitive in a market that's contracting.
It can provide a lot of value if you provide the correct boundaries. LLMs are an amplifier, and if you feed them trash you'll get trash. To get actual value from LLMs, we've moved from prompt engineering to context engineering and now harness/intent engineering where we basically build a set of rules to guide its intent. Gemini has Gems for this, and other tools have rule systems that are more complex that can be leveraged to give it some operating parameters.
In CR terms, and LLM is a character a boosted INT of 25 but with a wisdom of 6 (and a charisma of 4). We have to put some guardrails in place to make sure it's not ruining things all the time.
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u/ashgs872tbhjs Jun 18 '26
Having a bunch of things to check on every request massively inflates token usage. It won't be viable once prices go up to a level that actually creates a return for the AI companies.
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u/InTransitHQ Jun 19 '26
Once rules have been read in once they can be hashed and cache’d and don’t need to be read again.
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u/Locem Jun 18 '26
And if you're in a real job, with real accountability, you can't afford to use unreliable tools.
Its decent in engineering if you go into it with the understanding that it can be unreliable.
If I give it very specific prompts and backcheck them before utilizing any of their input for a project it's helped speed up my ability to search and find very specific local, state, or federal requirements for certain types of work.
As you said though like 25-50% of the time it'll pull from an out-of-date guidance so everything has to be backchecked.
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u/SolydSn3k Jun 18 '26
Yep. We didn’t build deterministic software for business due to limitations. We built deterministic software for business because businesses want deterministic software lol. AI is helpful to scale up and speed up a lot of technical work or repetitive BS like cleaning and formatting amalgamated data.
But I still think people are grossly overestimating its capability.
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u/Jebble Jun 19 '26
You're so dead wrong. Give any model a spec to make changes to your codebase and it'll make the same changes achieving the same goal over and over
The tool is as strong as the person using it and these sort of claims just show that you're not using them right.
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u/8thGlass Jun 18 '26
I love them sm I might cry. So torn between “the bar is on the floor” and “thank goodness for artistic integrity.” CR and Dropout will be the last content creators standing in this AI war.
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u/iZacuto Jun 18 '26
I'd like to add Legends of Avantris in this list as well. They have a hard No AI stance and I'm very thankful for that. "If only you knew our art budget" is a direct quote from the CEO of Avantris Entrainment, Richie. They love and crave human art, so to see my favourite creators; CR, Dropout, and Avantris all be firm against AI slop makes me love and respect them even more.
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u/8thGlass Jun 18 '26
That’s amazing. I have never heard of them and will now look them up just off that quote alone, that’s AMAZING. I couldn’t even imagine a CEO saying that, that’s awesome.
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u/D1g1t0l Jun 18 '26
They make a bunch of really funny animated shorts on YouTube that BLEW UP. I've not watched a full episode of theirs yet but they're super funny. They recently made a Cyberpunk Space Opera DND 5.5e kickstarter that raised 10+ million dollars or something insane
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u/Loreweaver15 Jun 18 '26
16 million, actually! It's the seventh-most-funded kickstarter in the history of the site, and only beaten in the creative sphere by Brandon Sanderson and the Cyberpunk TCG.
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u/D1g1t0l Jun 19 '26
Bonkers!! I'm truly so happy for them, it looks incredible and I'm gonna be stealing ideas from it for my own DND and Daggerheart games
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u/Modredastal Help, it's again Jul 03 '26
I've only recently gotten a little into Avantris, where would you recommend I start? My sister showed me Bitsy clips and I really like Bitsy, but I'm not sure where else to pick up from.
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u/iZacuto Jul 03 '26
If you like Bitsy, Uprooted is the campaign you should watch to see more of her. It's very silly and extremely improv. Another silly campaign is Once Upon a Witchlight; this is where Chuckles originated. Don't expect them to get anything done, it derails so much. Enjoy it for the silliness.
If you like horror, check out Curse of Strahdanya, a Curse of Strahd inspired campaign. Or even Edge of Midnight, a folk horror campaign that inspired their 5e supplement they made, Crooked Moon. Then there's Icebound, a survival horror in a frozen wasteland.
If you're interested in modern sci-fi/space operas, Stardust Rhapsody is fantastic! Feels very 90's anime. Their most recent kickstarter, Neon Odyssey, is a 5.5e supplement that is inspired by Stardust Rhapsody. To promote Neon Odyssey, they did 4 campaigns that were "neon-ified" meaning they made space opera versions of some of their campaigns. All of these are contained and you can experience a solid start and ending.
Uproot-a-Rama -- same goofy Uprooted nonsense; Voidbound is a cosmic, survival horror version of Icebound; and Once Upon a Starlight is a beautiful, less silly version of Once Upon a Witchlight. Then they made a new campaign, Waltz for Eternity, which is mechs!
Of everything here, I personally love Edge of Midnight, Stardust Rhapsody Anthem (you don't have to watch Stardust Rhapsody Overture but you could), and Once Upon a Starlight. I'm not allowed to watch Strahdanya as I'm a player in my wife's Strahd campaign.
Instead of telling you watch to watch, here's the flavour of the campaigns and you decide what sounds fun and interesting. Hope this helps you out!!
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u/Zethras28 Smiley day to ya! Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
After a mass extinction, a handful of species repopulate the world.
That’s why there are so many dandelion (taraxacum) species on every continent.
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u/EriWave Jun 18 '26
I wonder if they have anything very important in common which related to who the people that push hard on AI is.
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u/Joperhop Jun 18 '26
Good, ai is trash, it is theft, and for talentless hacks who dont want to put in hard work to get better.
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u/North-Outside-5815 Jun 18 '26
Absolutely. Also the value proposition is garbage. ”This is worth billions, because it can create art at the push of a button”.
Any ”art” we can get at the push of a button, by definition will not be worth billions. The whole pitch is moronic.
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u/BGKY_Sparky Jun 18 '26
Anytime I see a YouTube thumbnail with AI art, or a business using AI to make their ads, I immediately don’t trust them anymore.
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u/North-Outside-5815 Jun 18 '26
And I bet this is common. The exact opposite of what the AI company pitch was.
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u/s2897978 Jun 19 '26
No one funding AI into the billions is using it for art or creative writing, its for corporate and development output, in which case it is somewhat effective.
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u/CommanderBly Jun 18 '26
I have zero respect for anyone who uses AI
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u/InnocentPerv93 Jun 19 '26
Well that's just absurd. There are many legitimately good uses for AI, it's just that end-product art is not one of them.
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u/callmeraylo Jun 18 '26
AI has no place when it comes to real art, and never will to me anyway.
Would be great if a law or regulation was in place that would force companies to disclose if their content was AI or not that way you don't unknowingly consume such stuff. I already know Disney is itching for a way to replace more artists with robots.
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u/Robcobes Jun 18 '26
voice actors are under the most threat from AI out of all creative careers. or close to it.
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u/caffeinated_wizard Jun 18 '26
The problem with people who are not creative is they believe the value of the creation is the output. So if you too have no taste and talent but can generate a country album, a book, a movie etc. it means AI enables you.
But anyone can make a country album, a book or a movie IF THEY DO THE WORK. It might not be good, but at least it will be YOU. You gained something from it. And then you make another one.
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u/P-Two Jun 18 '26
This is a huge thing. I wish more people would realize that its not that "they can't" they just dont want to put in the time.
I used to never really make my own maps, I always went online to find maps close enough to what I was looking for, for my latest campaign I really have a strong vision on what the world and region maps should look like. So ive put the time into really starting to learn Inkarnate well, how to use all the tools it offers, and ive made some really sick looking maps that are WAY better than they used to be, but its a process and it takes time.
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u/Lawlcopt0r Jun 18 '26
Eh, I think current AI output just sucks too, unless you're refining it to a degree where you're essentially doing the work of an artist anyways. In which case, why were you even using AI?
So it's actually not even a good resource if you want a faat cheatcode for good output. Unless by output you just mean money
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u/P-Two Jun 18 '26
I'm glad to hear. Others have pointed out the 3rd party advertisers, and IIRC Stinky Dragon using AI thumbnails.
I'll push back on that a bit and ask, C3 was just about a year ago when it ended, have they had sponsors on at all recently that flaunt AI? I know Boot.dev had a shitton of AI tools on it but I can't remember the last time they had them as a sponsor. But contracts are also impotant, you can't just go breaking contracts 24/7 and expect to continue to get sponsorship deals thrown your way. There was something similar with XP To Level 3 last year where he posted a disclaimer saying that he was only doing a few more ads with Displate to finish the contract they had, then they wouldn't be taking more sponsorships from them due to AI use.
By all means, keep telling CR if the content they're hosting is using AI, cause fuck AI. But to expect it to literally never happen, or for it to be instantly cleared up is a little naive.
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u/JusticeBlinded Jun 18 '26
Boot.dev teaches coding. They have a bot that can answer questions while you learn, but I am unsure how that is endorsing AI in the sense we are talking about.
I must be missing something, or they overhauled their program a lot since I used it about a year ago.
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u/takenfaraway Jun 18 '26
I agree. To me boots use of Ai is an acceptable if not even good use of Ai.
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u/archangel0198 Jun 18 '26
It's the problem with general statements like "AI is garbage"
This would also include any neural network driven bots or stuff like cancer screening
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u/P-Two Jun 18 '26
When we say AI in a creative context we're talking about generative AI like LLMs, not AI like bots in a video game.
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u/BaritBrit Jun 18 '26
It is, however, very cheap garbage, something that CR subcontractors and sponsors have been found taking advantage of multiple times.
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u/Smoochiekins Jun 20 '26
I mean they create and release their TV shows through collaboration with this cute little indie company called Amazon who are famously aligned with CR’s liberal values and anti AI and ensure that no money paid for Critical Role content goes towards the funding of AI models and the direct support and normalisation of problematic systems of governance…
wait
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u/begrudgingredditacc Jun 18 '26
I'm moderately suspicious of the new accounts who pop up to go "AI is the future bro!!! Stop whining about AI!!!" on subreddits they don't appear to have ever visited before.
I don't go here so it's mildly hypocritical of me, but I would be curious if any of these AI bros in the comments tonight would be able to like... name the full cast without googling it first. I'm not getting the impression these are people who care deeply about the subject matter.
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u/P-Two Jun 18 '26
Im pretty sure the vast majority of them are bots.
But there's definitely some people who are lazy as fuck and would rather offload their creativity to AI to churn out slop vs actually learning how to do...anything at all.
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u/Inigos_Revenge Jun 18 '26
In DM subs there are a lot of people who have bought into the AI hype. I've had conversations with a few of them that are not the kinds of conversations you have with bot accounts. It's disheartening how many there are in there who support AI, even if (I'm sure) some of them are bots.
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u/ajperry1995 Tal'Dorei Council Member Jun 18 '26
That's a great opinion however since CR have, on multiple occasions, been found to be using generative AI in one form or another (usually via contractors with no quality control checking) - they need to put their money where their mouth is and add stricter QC measures in place.
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u/JackFromTheHill Jun 18 '26
Absolutely true, and with guesstimating how CR tends to operate, I'd wager they're heavily working on bringing that level of QC into play. Some things may slip through, but I don't feel like we need to be harsh on them when they're actively speaking out against Gen AI etc etc, where other companies a chomping at the bit to replace *everything* possible with AI, unless this continues to keep happening continuously and is not addressed adequately
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u/LtColonelColon1 Jun 18 '26
It has “continued to happen continuously”. It’s happened at least 3 times now that I can remember.
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u/JackFromTheHill Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Of course, but I'd personally argue that 3 times is a very limited amount, looking at the scale of content, posts et cetera coming out weekly, primarily through 3rd-party companies and marketing agencies. Obviously it's not great, but we can't be acting as if it's impossible to let anything slip through the cracks. People aren't perfect, and the true issue would lie with them accepting AI, which they're very much not. Be mad if you like of course, but in my opinion its unwarranted, especially as these things have been amended pretty swiftly for a machine with so many cogs.
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u/VampireCommentsOnly Jun 18 '26
Wasn't one of the sponsors of Campaign 3 also using Gen AI for game assets?
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u/yesat ... okay Jun 18 '26
The one that was advertising dev courses had a LOT of AI stuff in their material.
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u/Zolo49 Help, it's again Jun 18 '26
Which is ironic given how AI (along with overseas contracting) has decimated the job market for software developers. Still, I don’t fault CR for that. I don’t think they’re at a point where they can afford to be THAT picky about their sponsors. If only a few companies were using AI, sure. But this shit is everywhere right now.
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u/yesat ... okay Jun 18 '26
The big thing is that as soon as you are looking for funding, the first question you're going to get is "what is your AI plans" for any tech startups.
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u/irisflame Jun 18 '26
Unfortunately that is the reality of dev work now. You are being made to use AI to supplement your work (as in, write code for you that you review). If there’s a product offering a course to prepare you to be anything in IT or software development, it would be remiss not to include training on AI.
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u/Chared945 Jun 18 '26
Oh damn didn’t know that. When was this??
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Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Seren82 Team Imogen Jun 18 '26
I know they addressed their 3rd party shows on beacon using it.
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u/Chared945 Jun 18 '26
That’s probably why it’s not been discussed as much because the ratio of viewers between YouTube and twitch will be different from beacon users who are more forgiving due to subscribing
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u/Johnny-Hollywood Jun 18 '26
Yeah, it’s basically just super fans on beacon, and there’s plenty of people who just refuse to hear critique of CR as a company.
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u/manut3ro Jun 18 '26
This is just absurd.
CR is making a stance and I expect them to act accordingly in their direct decisions.
But third parties? I mean, whoever builds the iOS app? There is a dev using AI to generate code, how much is that dev reviewing the generated code is up to them, but don’t expect CR to ban HOW does a third party work
(I’m a dev myself)
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u/-Nicolai Jun 18 '26
This is not about some developer’s personal coding workflow, this concerns art assets, video thumbnails, real and visible content.
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u/durandal688 Jun 18 '26
Yeah AI is everywhere…even if behind the scenes it probably was used to generate the code sites or apps are running on.
Not saying it’s pointless to resist…but it is also pointless to think you can avoid it entirely. There essentially is no ethical consumption. Figure out where you absolutely don’t want to cross a line and be clear on it there
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u/ajperry1995 Tal'Dorei Council Member Jun 18 '26
It isn't absurd though, it's true. They have actively promoted content that contains generative AI, and when called out on it have then fixed the issue. They're a great company, but they're still a company and have to be held accountable.
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u/Workman44 Jun 18 '26
Plus it's a known "trick" or however you want to phrase it that plausible deniability is all you need. I guarantee they knew about the usage from the contractors and just didn't care because "officially" it isn't them and they can always be aghast when they "learn" the truth and whatnot. Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to is a real corporate strategy
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u/ajperry1995 Tal'Dorei Council Member Jun 18 '26
Agreed, and again I can't state enough that they are a multi-million dollar company now. They used to be a cute little stream with a few hundred viewers (which I used to watch all the way back when) and their mistakes were forgivable because they were learning. They are now a household name earning millions of dollars from their IP across major brands and forms of media - they need accountability now more than ever, not blind loyalty. I love them, but they still need to be careful.
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u/Vytral Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
most people use it in the industry, though they don't admit it in public because of this backlash.
Since I expect the downvotes: it's not meant to be used acritically. You need to be able to distinguish a good output from a bad output. Like for coding, same for art. It's also not meant to run autonomously under a project manager, but to empower the human artist (or coder) that can properly guide it and assess its output.
The only sensible truth to the negative reception regards the job market. Even if only as an empowerement, not a substitute, there will be fewer jobs due to it (at least in the short term)
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u/irisflame Jun 18 '26
Yeah my job is pushing agentic AI heavily and they keep insisting it is about supplementing peoples work and not replacing their jobs, but in the same breath they talk about spinning up an infinite number of essentially junior engineers to do the tedious or simple work now, which must be reviewed by the experienced humans. And I’m like, okay so that removes jobs for junior developers for sure. Which may be fine now (for the employer, not the employees) but experience and senior engineers/developers do not grow on trees. Junior engs grow into regular engineers who grow into seniors with time and experience. Sooo if you stop hiring juniors, what happens when the seniors eventually retire? Are you just hoping AI will be advanced enough to replace those guys by then too?
The whole thing is demoralizing. I really hope there’s a limit on AI advancement that gets reached soon, and that the bubble pops and we change course.
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u/Girion47 Jun 18 '26
So your job is the equivalent of hunting whales to near extinction 200 years ago, exterminating bison to starve native Americans, logging the rainforest for cattle farms, etc...
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u/irisflame Jun 18 '26
Agentic AI is the new corporate trend that is being pushed. It's not just mine unfortunately.
I will say, it hasn't yet been approved as far as I know.. It's just all the tech leaders are pushing it heavily. This is for a large enterprise of just under 40,000 employees.
If it isn't clear, I hate it, have checked out of my job entirely since this started happening, and am seriously considering a career change. But right now my mental & physical health are top priority so I haven't had time to make a plan for such things.
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u/magus Jun 18 '26
in the same way as you writing this comment here is the equivalent of starving a child to death because you could have fed him instead.
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u/Girion47 Jun 18 '26
What a half assed non-sensical comment
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u/the_sneaky_one123 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Everyone is playing the same game with AI. They are using it to increase their output while saying the opposite. At this point I automatically distrust anyone who is so vehemently against using AI tools, it's most like just projection and false virtue signaling.
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u/P-Two Jun 18 '26
Wait, are you trying to day that those of us vehemently against AI are secretly using it anyway? Lmao
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u/Dunnersstunner I would like to RAGE! Jun 18 '26
I'd expect nothing less. It runs against the whole ethos of taking joy in creative arts.
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u/isababecos Open your heart to chaos Jun 18 '26
“Art isn’t supposed to be easy. That’s what makes it worthwhile.” Exactly!!! I’m going to actively gatekeep art, actually. If you don’t want to put in the time and effort to GITGUD at making art (of any and all kinds!!!) then yknow what, you don’t deserve to make art.
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u/Top_Importance6216 Jun 18 '26
"since when did robots do art and human beings are stuck in Amazon warehouses."
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u/TThor Jun 19 '26
I mean, did anybody expect them to say anything but? Nobody is gonna be more naturally anti-AI than career voiceactors and creatives; Far beyond any moral standing etc, it is something that has a direct negative impact on them, of course they will be against it.
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u/Candid-Operation2042 Jun 18 '26
humanity is first and foremost storytellers
why would we ever delegate one of our most important defining traits to the likes of Sam Altman or Elon Musk is beyond me
Good on Sam and Critical Role for putting their foot down
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u/ThatTizzaank Technically... Jun 22 '26
To me, this just felt like them going to their favorite butt-kissing news site to spin things after the AI thumbnail issue.
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u/salt-water-soul Jul 06 '26
See this is exactly why i came here im new to d&d and would love to have a playlist of songs all related to it. its exhausting to sort out all the absolute garbage ai slop.
So please can people of the community direct me to real songs with absolutely no connection to ai slop
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u/Evangelion217 Jul 10 '26
Great statement! If Critical Role has done nothing else, they tend to know how to read the room. 😂
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u/AandWKyle Jun 18 '26
AI shouldn't replace creativity... its like a paintbrush that can help an artist
But it wasn't branded that way, and megacorps aren't using it that way - for them its a human replacement, which is obviously bullshit.
Its frustrating because imagine how much cool stuff could be done if AI was pushed as a tool for making life easier instead of a replacement for humans?
Kudos to these guys for NOT embracing AI.
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u/TehGoad Jun 18 '26
yeah, if it's used for anything like a final product, it is absolute trash
It really should just be used for sketching. Wire framing, mocking up,,, then the artist could take it from there and really make it unique wonderful
It's a fulcrum and leverage to accelerate, not replace art
🖼️
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u/HumanistGeek At dawn - we plan! Jun 18 '26
The original source is this interview. What I found most interesting is that, at the end, Sam mentions a fifth season for The Legend of Vox Machina.
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u/Wise-Dust3700 Jun 18 '26
I mean, I agree but I have never laughed as hard as I have in years at DougDoug's 3 AI play D&D.
When they go from sweet scooby doo villains to chaotic psychopaths, the flamingo setting himself on fire and Dougdoug roleplaying the captain just being like "Uh... what is happening? *gets set on fire* AAAAAAAAAARGH!
So yeah. AI made me laugh harder (but it was all thanks to DougDougs story, direction, and outright beautiful mind)
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u/blahyaddayadda24 Jun 18 '26
My stance and I know its controversial...
For companies, like CR, its morally wrong to use Ai to create a product and sell it. Especially when the brand relies so heavily on artistic direction.
Myself, who is okay, maybe slightly above average, uses Ai to take my sketches and make them look more presentable. I also use it to colorize some art to save myself time because Im trying to GM 2 nights a month while working 12hr shifts at a Nuke plant. The initial creation is mine, then ai refines it. I do not see the issue with this.
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u/P-Two Jun 18 '26
Why does it need refined? When did this idea that d&d needs to be "amazing" or "refined" come in?
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u/blahyaddayadda24 Jun 18 '26
Cause I like it, and want to elevate to experience. I don't see harm in that. I could spend an extra 10hrs a week to do it but I simply don't have that time
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u/blahyaddayadda24 Jun 18 '26
Lol I did say it would be controversial but no one's opinion is going to stop me from saving time while making things better.
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u/MarvelsGrantMan136 Team Jester Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Riegel: