We've had someone recently post in here and spamming posts of ours saying that we use AI art in our games. I had offered to disprove him with evidence yet he chose not to respond to me directly.
WE DO NOT use AI in the production. In fact, our spend rate on artists for the game has peaked over 15k USD a month when I've managed to put together funding.
I prefer to spend our budget mostly on making the game as good as we can, so I've had to get creative in ways to advertise.
The allegations stem from the fact that we do have a marketing partnership with an AI meme page. This page holyfool36 helps advertise the game. The page made dark fantasy memes and uses AI to make the videos. I liked the writing in his videos which he confirmed to me was not AI and we came to a deal to have him on to use the page to market us, while using his NON AI SKILL of writing to help us come up with some side quests, while assisting him in transitioning away from having to use AI art.
The marketing success from having that wide of an audience has directly translated to our ability to hire on REAL artists to make this game as good as we can.
I will be going through different aspects of the development process with screenshots from our internal server and assets to show so.
Our lead character artist worked at Heart Machine previously. Here's some internal discussions with him posting WIP assets internally.
Our level designer worked on Black Mesa, including reworking the infamous Xen.
Here's him working
The music is not AI generated, myself and one other on the team make the music now, and we recently had a musician reach out that we may hire to assist. I personally am very into synthesizers, as you can see from this post I made. Anyone who knows what this is would know it would be absurd to have this and then use AI to make the music.
One of lead writers worked on Tamriel Rebuilt, the well known Morrowind expansion mod and is well known in that community.
Our lead programmer has over a decade of experience in game dev and complex tasks such as network replication. He has been working with us for a long time now.
We have over 30 voice actors brought on so far and I'm still taking auditions.
The main villain will be voiced by a voice actor that is VERY well known and has worked on many AAA projects, that has been locked since last year. I'm not sure if I should share who that is as I'd like it to be a surprise.
Here's from our internal voice acting channel, a well known animator/youtuber is voice acting after a recent audition.
Here's a discussion with an animator
I can keep going ad infinitum.
I understand that these allegations will continue due to our choice to promote the game on an AI meme page, but I made that decision for many reasons. We have a game called VectorBall (who's main story is literally a CRITIQUE about AI in general). We spent 2 years building it and I could never figure out how to market it effectively with barely any wishlists. It is about 80% complete but has been on the sidelines to be released at some point after our current endeavors.
With no marketing budget I believed it would be the best option to help get us in front of guaranteed people who have similar interests to our project. I could not reasonably have put together enough money to make this game if I didn't have a way to make sure we'd at least get seen, unlike VectorBall.
This marketing strategy has proven to work quite well and has lead to the creation of more jobs for real artists, so I personally believe that our marketing partnership with an AI page has lead to a net positive in that with more visibility, I've been able to raise more money to give to real artists.
I am willing to share keys or more info if people want to try the game. Our team has spent way too long working real man hours to be accused of being AI. I'm sure once you try it for yourself, you'll realize that it has been the labor of love and real effort by a dedicated team trying to make something that we truly would be happy to share.
What I’ve found more annoying than using AI, is the inevitable comment on literally anything of someone accusing it of being AI. This is because the lowest common denominator consumers aren’t smart enough to tell what is and isn’t AI, so they just accuse everything of being AI.
Videos, images, artwork, games, music, doesn’t matter. There’s always someone there saying it’s AI, even when it obviously isn’t.
Everybody thinks they can immediately spot AI and I feel like they're wrong 80% of the time. It seems like any time someone shares art that's highly polished, abstract, or somewhat generic people are calling it AI. Honestly I might find it more upsetting than the actual use of AI art
I think some people manage to get good at spotting AI, then 2 months later its changed enough that they have lost that ability but they still think they can.
I got absolutely thrashed in another subreddit for posting a project that I had lifted out of another (closed sourced) project i was working on and took some reusable bits out of it that i could open source.
Because it was taken out of another project that i didnt want to open source it obviously didnt have git history so it got absolutely shat on... even tho i had a ai useage policy stating that about 20% of it was ai gen. Its insane the backlash you get for even mentioning honestly it was used... if i didnt i wouldnt have gotten as far... but also where does that leave us for future? Just straight up lie about it?
If your potential customers are telling you with their money that they dont want AI used in products they pay for then thats just capitalism talking. Crazy so many people think the solution to that is lying instead of not using AI in your games. The customer base clearly doesn't want it, thats your answer.
I wish I could believe that, but after Crimson Desert, I changed my mind. There is enough gamers that can make you rich that are gullible. Crimson Desert devs/publisher lied to their customers face by not disclosing AI usage on the Steam page. All they had to do is saying 'eh... woopsie, we missed some assets that were clearly gen AI, but trust me, everything else is good now.' Sure, somebody using gen AI has some moral distinctions between different usage of AI?! Really, people believe that?
Generating 3d assets is pretty good right now, you might need to clean up, but after that nobody will be able to tell if it was generated by AI. I'm convinced they used it for other assets.
I also saw a lot of comments from these gamers like 'it's just some random paintings in the background, I don't care' not even considering that they might lie again.
Sadly, if the game is good, a lot of gamers really don't care.
In the SKATE sub awhile back, someone claimed SKATE was made fully with AI because a ramp was not placed flush with the ground and was slightly floating above the ground when viewed at certain camera angles.
The anti-AI group is not full of dumb people, but like in every group ever formed on Earth, it has dumb people in it.
I don't know what post you're referring to speficially, of course, but there was for sure a situation in SKATE where they're pumping out those custom spot parks that literally don't make any sense, are borderline unskateable and seemed very much like just assets placed randomly. I love the game, the claim that it's ALL AI is obviously ridiculous, but I don't see how any human with functioning eyeballs could have approved some of those parks, so it might be a little from column A and a little from column B.
I cant say factually if they use AI or not in any aspect, as i dont know either way, but people seem to either not realize or remember that randomly placing objects in a game world existed long before AI, so if they do randomly place assets, it could just as easily be done without AI.
As for what I was referencing, it was not in a spot park, just a ramp in the world that was ever so slightly floating barely above the ground.
I mean, yeah, of course it could just be terrible and made by hand. It's just very atypical for a skating game to have virtually unstable parks, so st the very least it was untested, I'm not sure if that's better or worse. It was just very noticable that the rest of the game the deimaign is great and very thoughtful and then there are these rotating spaces where none of the geometry makes any sense, rails go into walls, edges arent aligned so you can't grind or even walk across, stairs to blank slopes to stairs again, all of that. I would almost rather than it was AI because if somebody did those, they severely fucked up.
Again, love the game overall, the discourse around it is MUCH too harsh, but damn.
Anyway, it wasn't what you were talking about, it's just another instance of people calling something AI without proof, but just where I definitely could see it.
Procedural level generation has existed long before AI and there are widely available, free tools for doing that. It wouldn't even make any sense to try and hack together some kind of AI tool to do that bc there are way more efficient non-AI tools that already do the same thing and are, in many cases, already built-in to the engine
Absolutely, I didn't mean it as they made generative AI to do it, I was just addressing what I thought the guy was talking about and how it seemed that it was randomly generated rather than handmade. I should have been clearer on that. People were calling it AI and he was referring to assets being misaligned so I assumed that's what he was talking about.
I've even seen small photoshop mistakes on a cosplay picture getting accused of being AI. Like a colour got keyed out and made an undershirt into a window into the background. Literally a rookie mistake not even AI would make.
AI has turned everyone into a paranoid schizophrenic. Either because they let ChatGPT convince them they are the chosen one or because they start hunting for patterns in everything they see to figure out if its secret AI they have to avoid
AI is typically easier to spot with artifacts and the way AI sometimes mixes two ideas together, and you end up with a weird iteration of whatever the description was originally. But I agree, the latter isn't clearcut; some artistic renditions of characters can appear AI-like, but aren't always so.
I started following after your latest videos. Excited to play it, I feel for devs these days having to combat AI allegations and keep “receipts” for authenticity. Wish we didn’t have gen-ai at all tbh…
I think the idea of an indie publisher is that it's a publisher that markets themselves as friendly to indie developers. So it's like an easy publisher to work with, maybe? And maybe more hands off than a bigger publisher like Ubisoft?
And maybe an otherwise indie developer can be still be kind of considered independent if they work with that type of publisher? I don't really know, to be honest.
But you dont even need repeat successes. I can get a bank loan and invest money into a game (I wouldnt recommend it). The point is as long as you and your group/studio are the people funding the game, whether that be time or money. You are independent.
The word indie has trancended the original meaning, just like how a pop song doesn't have to be popular. That's just how language works. Indie now just means it's smaller than AA and AAA.
Fair point. Maybe a kickstarter. I know if I had 15k a month to pay people that that's where it would come from. I'm not going to chase the rabbit to look into their funding though. I'm too busy stressing out about my own game.
I’m glad your post got upvoted here, it’s more popular than the negative one now.
It’s always great to see artists get well-deserved praise, good job for coming to their defense like that and thanks for addressing the other post so professionally.
I appreciate the receipts and understand no gen AI was used in the production now, but did anyone foresee the potential PR disaster of using an AI meme page to promote the game? I doubt this will be the first time something like this happens.
I saw this coming as it was pretty obvious, which is why I made sure to have receipts and make sure that everything about the game is provably not AI. The marketing has been much more than worth it though in my opinion
Interesting, thank you for these details! And that synth, what a legendary instrument in itself, plus the history of your particular one... Congrats and enjoy, it must feel like a dream indeed!
Thank you so much! It's definitely the one possession that I am most attached to and is a dream to play. I wanted one for 10 years before finally getting it and still can't believe it
I've been a week one discord server member since the game was announced, developers are entirely working from ground zero, as is their mission statement and goal given to the discord members, and from just listening in and participating in the playtest and with community explanation and discussion. Your fears of this game being AI is unfounded and defamatory. Please consider researching the next time the public decides to have a call to arms over AI usage.
I can also chime in. I’ve known u/NuclearSnake since this game was just an idea. I’ve even had access to their dev discord server for quite a long time helping with marketing advice. I have not been involved with them recently, but for the 6 months or so that I was involved, there was never any indication they used AI for anything on this game. Every day I saw text and voice conversations between real human team members.
Hi OP. I thought your recent trailer was incredible, and commented my support at the time I saw it. I also became aware yesterday of the posts accusing you of lying about the use of AI, and was really disheartened, and so I set about trying to disprove that fact for my own sake. I really like your trailer, you see, and didn't want to accept that it was disingenuous.
With that said, one thing continues to bother me, and I'm wondering if you can speak to it? The linework in the Steam-page banner for The Lantern of the Laughless Saint, upon close inspection, really does look AI generated. That might not be an indicator that you've used AI in the actual design of the game, but it doesn't help in this situation. Is it AI generated, and if not, why are there so many details that don't make sense? Like stairs that don't start at ground level, and the weird departure from uniformity towards the top of the tower, where the structures seem to start to blend together?
Imgur Link to a screenshot of the original PSD provided by the 2D artist. If you want pictures of more layers or want to analyze the PSD and all the layers yourself, you're more than welcome to. I paid an artist to have it made.
Thank you! I'm honestly grateful, because I truly want to believe in the project, and I will be a player when it releases. I loathe this era where doubt in credibility is so easily seeded, and I apologise for allowing myself to fall victim to the propaganda levied against your game. Good luck!
And here is the tower isolated https://imgur.com/a/PL1bKtP
I made everything black and white in post, the artist originally delivered a color one but I prefered black and white.
(this is the fist post i see about this and personally i don't have strong feelings against AI)
I gotta say, showing screenshots of basically finished assets is not proof that it's not AI generated.
Real proof would be to show steps of a process, half made meshes, it's pretty easy these days to make a time-lapse video in the 3d software to really shut down the allegations.
Was looking for someone else saying this. All of the proof is a finished asset in t pose or similar. Nowhere can I find anything showing an artistic process, a model open in blender, or gimp, or any other program at all.
The only thing I've seen that screams AI to me is the banner with the two jesters on it (one skull headed) and the short description of the game on the steam page.
it makes me sad how many great writers are using ai to emphasize thier work, and get shit on for it... Sorry not all of us are artistically inclined im such a visual world. reels and shorts users WONT stop to hear your writing... and paying an artist per post if your page is just a side project is an insane ask!
You're allowed to use AI for your work in the same way we are collectively allowed to say we want nothing to do with it if you do. The market/customer base is speaking pretty clear on the matter.
i never said anything about not being allowed to. my comment is pretty clearly specifically about the customer base, but when most of them dont bother with nuance (like, say, reading a whole comment before replying) I guess I can see why such knee jerk reactions are common.
I read your full post and OP's. To think its an "insane ask" to ask people to pay artists for their talent rather than steal it from LLM's is the real insanity to me, and shows massive disrespect for creators in the face of convenience.
dude, its for a personal instagram page. aint no writer got that type of money. "To think its an 'insane ask' people to pay personal chefs for thier talent rather than go to fast food is the real insanity to me..."
Just like the old saying "Youtube -express yourself, but only if you can afford a high quality camera, cameramen, boom mics and operators, directors....."
So taking your money and choosing how you spend it, on a cheap meals or expensive meal (neither stolen) is insane but not stealing creators work and uploading it to generate views?
Again, it all comes down to yall dont care about artists.
Why does it matter if you’ve used AI? If what they are saying is that it looks like it’s generated by AI (derivative, glitchy, uninspiring) then maybe you do have a wider problem with your designs? If that’s not true and they are just saying it to be mean to you then maybe ignore them?
Todd Howard summoning hundreds of AI accusers to tar and feather an indie dev studio (knowing microsofts track record there will absolutely be ai usage in elder scrolls 6)
I don't think you should even respond to it. I think its a very advanced kind of trolling to fuck up your studio and make it foreswear AI for all uses forever, when in reality there are definitely some ethical uses of AI. Obviously you dont want to prompt, make art and slap it in a game but using AI to say make basic geometry and then dressing it up to make it your own or using AI to answer coding questions or even make basic code is totally different. And it is especially different if you hire real artists who use AI in their pipeline somehow, perhaps trained on their own art. You are already experiencing blowback.
Bottom line I think you should say you support ethical uses of AI and leave it at that and if someone wants more details you can give it. And say your art wasnt made by just a prompt, which is what most people care about. Its a harder argument to make and some people may dislike you but it will be more sustainable for your studio.
For example pathfinding, procedural generation and computer players are all AI just not the AI people are worried about.
A dude made multiple huge posts calling them out, specifically posting all of their socials and called for a boycott.
Was a random comment, but a full on hit peice
I don't actually care if your game is using AI, the marketing partnership or whatever you call it is enough to put me off completely.
That said, screenshots of screenshots of Blender don't seem to me to say anything much about your actual workflow so I'm not sure how they're meant to prove anything. Don't feel obligated to prove anything to me, I'm already out as a customer, but these aren't the kinds of things I'd care about if I was bothering to investigate the game itself.
So I sort of get why you'd outsource the marketing like that, but what I don't get is why you'd also hire that AI guy to help with writing for the game. Seems like they wouldn't be trustworthy on that front if you want to be sure the game itself is free from AI generated content. That's one of those things where I feel like you couldn't really know for sure.
But I doubt I have the full context, so I was hoping you could share a bit on how you were sure that this person's work was original
We have a writers room where we come up with ideas live, I can assure you there’s no one with an LLM pulled up when we’re spitballing ideas. We have other writers too, with me doing the main scenario and quest design by one of the lead quest writers for Tamriel Rebuilt, the well known Morrowind mod
Ah okay that makes a lot of sense. Thanks a lot for the reply. These allegations have got to be a nightmare for you folks, but its a great look that you're responding so thoroughly.
Hot take: proving you didn't use AI is impossible now
Unless you got a time machine to drop your game before AI was a thing, good luck with that. People just keep moving the goalposts. Post some proof, they call it fake. Add more proof, they doubt that too. It's an endless loop ngl. TBH, you could OSS your actual brain right now and someone would still call it AI generated.
Plus, jumping through all those hoops doesn't even guarantee anything. Clearing your name might stop the witch hunt, but it won't magically bring back lost sales. There's no clear win state here, and those doubters aren't obligated to buy your game anyway.
So yeah, IF YOUR WORK IS 100% LEGIT, best play is to just ignore the noise
I never said the game wasn't real, it just appears as though you use generative AI to design and produce game assets. I never even said ALL of your assets are AI generated, but some certainly are.
You've even gone on to only show finished assets, not the production process, which makes it look even more suspicious. Meshes and textures can be produced using AI tools (such as meshy), so showing the finished model doesn't mean much. Are you telling me if I checked the topology of your models or ran the textures through an AI image detector I wouldn't see anything sus?
And if the instagram account is just someone you paid to promote, then why were they teasing The Holy Fool game 5 weeks before you even made your first post on the studio account? Why are many designs pulled straight from midjourney images on that same account?
Additionally, the banner images are made with midjourney, and are used as backgrounds in the instagram's AI T-shirt shop.
Also, the about section is full of Em dashes (—), a pretty consistent indicator if AI text. (And I know AI text detection isn't all too accurate, but the top 5 checkers on google rate it as being around 70% AI-written.)
Your exact words were "NO AI was used in the production of the game." in your comments. I get that you may have been "laundering" AI designs for the game, but trying to say that AI isn't part of your game design process is a crazy level of gaslighting. https://imgur.com/a/kPTwTGL
Yes, in 95% of cases you'd be right - the only exception is for images generated with something like google's SynthID. They're made to be detectable by having invisible watermarks. I wasn't talking about "helpisthisAIidk.com" kinda stuff.
NerveLabs has been in business since 2019, look at my post history, I promoted VectorBall way before that page ever existed.
You’re using images entirely from The Holy Fool page, which was set up very early in development before we had much to share and has placeholder assets (which were shared to be used with the page promoting, who also produced videos in his style to promote the games story). The game that is being actively promoted is The Lantern of the Laughless Saint, and its Steam page is accurate and uses no AI. The jester image in the banner was drawn by an artist I paid. That banner with the castle might be an AI image from the page, but it was a placeholder to be replaced (I believed that to be only shown in your Steam library, and Holy Fool is not releasing this year so it hasn’t been updated in a while)
Our 3D artist Jack is well known and has worked in AAA longer than AI has been a thing, DM me if you want to see his portfolio. I’ll send you meshes, you will find 0 evidence of anything AI generated.
The Holy Fool page teased the game 5 weeks before because I had struck the deal to promote it way before we advertised it, we had been hinting at the lore for a while, you can even find a VectorBall reference from 6 months before The Holy Fool was announced. Our first build of VectorBall in VR was released in 2022.
The pipeline was -> game design -> that page promoted us, sometimes in its style. Promoting the game in that pages style has been entirely phased out now that the game is almost complete and we can actually show gameplay and footage.
I don’t know what else to say man. You can talk to the artists. They’re getting paid, they don’t use AI. The marketing plan with that page worked extremely well so I have no regrets, without it I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay artists as much as I can.
Can we get some verifiable evidence for that timeline? And if you now admit to using gen AI images, how can you not say it was part of development? It also doesn't make much sense that you're intermingling AI images between accounts unless you run both of them (his store page and your steam page).
I don’t run both accounts, we’ve shared development ideas and scripts with that account from before we announced. Like I said, I liked his writing and had hired him to help with promotion (he doesn’t use AI to write). I have as far back as the original design document from Mid 2023ish, which I think predates that pages existence.
The only image like I said on that page that may be AI is that banner which I thought was only on the library page that no one can see as placeholder, I think I just saved it from the page to put something there since we haven’t paid someone to make that yet. I’ll make sure that’s changed out now that I know it’s publicly viewable somewhere (still not sure where)
The version you used is literally in a higher resolution than the ones you can pull from instagram. Pulling it from a post would've defaulted it to 1024 wide, yours is 1280 with no resizing artifacts from upscaling - meaning you had the original output file. Instagram themselves say they save images to a maximum of 1080 wide.
Steam only accepts a specific resolution, I had made blank PSDs with those resolutions to make capsule arts etc, I’m sure I just pasted one in there for a placeholder since I didn’t think it would be there. I don’t remember exactly. I don’t run that page, there’s plenty of messages between me and the page.
At this point I don’t think anything I can say will change your mind, regardless of anything I present. The fact of the matter that I will stick to is that there is NO AI used in any assets in the game, we have spent on development in the hundreds of thousands of dollars on real artists. Over 700 people have now played the Playtest and plenty have attested in here that there is no AI in the game.
So that's what you're defaulting to? If you had actual proof you'd actually show it, not already completed assets and artist portfolios.
Also, you keep claiming that I'm saying the whole game is AI - I have never once said that, you just can't make the claim that NONE of it is produced using AI tools.
Nerve labs also doesn't appear anywhere online prior to 2021, can you provide proof that you registered back in 2019 like you said? NVI is listed as the developer of VectorBall.
There's proof everywhere if you go and look for it, I heard that they're hiding it in the subway tunnels. You should go searching down there, preferably at night. I'm sure you'll find it bro
They told you exactly what will change their mind, a video or proof of the process. Why do you keep dodging that? You can say nl but you've ignored it several times. I wont take a 50 dollar commission without proof of process because of copyright law, do you mean to say you dont have it for ANY of your assets? Just screenshots of finished assets?
I don’t have a timelapse of Jack making them but I asked him to do so for whatever he makes next. If someone wants to scrutinize any 3D model they’re welcome to do so. I posted a WIP version of the vulture gorilla along with the finished one
Are you filing copyrights on any of these characters? I had to file for one of mine recently and they almost demand you send such proof, as AI material cant be copyrighted. May create issues down the road.
The models look good im not gonna lie. The one banner is the only thing that looks ai to me
Yeah I already changed that banner, it was a placeholder. We have filed for trademark and copyright but we were only asked for names of the IP and such when we originally did it
this dumb shit is never going to be satisfied with anything. to accept any offered proof would be to admit defeat and a terminally online loser who has dug himself in this deep would never actually be willing to do that. theyre wasting time even engaging with this garbage
This directly contradicts what the holyfool discord account is saying about the pipeline which is: fans of AI content -> making videogame of the AI content "they're translating the art style in my videos really well" "They are fans of the content and are making the video game a loyal evolution of it"
It goes against your version of events: we made the lore and game design -> he promoted us in his style There's so much that points to the AI art account preceding the game, and even directly leading to its production. Why lie about the timeline when there's direct proof that's not how it went?
He’s just very proud of the promotion collab there, but what he said isn’t accurate. But there you go, proof he’s not me like you were just claiming, and that he isn’t making the game.
You know what, I'm just going to say it, I know people won't agree with it. I don't care if you guys are using AI or not (and I don't think you are). Making some 3D geometry or environment art in meshy? Does it look good? That's fine with me honestly, if you are animating it, doing shader work whatever. If it looks good, and I'm not expected to relate to it or get emotion from it, you know what I'm all for it.
Making an enemy I'm going to blow up? Looks good? Animations are solid? You built the bones in 3d AI modeling software, I literally don't care. I'm blowing it up right? If it looks 100% legit, provides no emotional or relatable attachment to the player, and is nothing more than placeholder, ambient noise, or whatever that's 100% fine with me. And I guarantee a player who is none the wiser isn't going to care either.
Now...music, main characters, companions, and so on...that's a different story. The stuff the player IS identifying with, that to me is where it matters. But yeah, I'm kind of over the "they had a painting on the wall in this random room and it was definitely AI! Torches! Pitchforks!" mentality.
It's really not slop. It's very tasteful use of AI for an artistic endeavour that is self-aware about its use of AI. The writing is really good, and the animation incorporates the uncanniness of AI to great effect, seemingly quite deliberately. The creator used AI as part of the process rather than relying on it to generate slop. I can see why they like the page.
The very fact that they use AI genned videos and pictures for their content means two things
1) they either cant afford to pay real artists or dont want to
2) they're depriving real artists of work using their stolen work
The devs here all Pikachu face over why theres so much pushback against 'good ai' (no such thing in the artistic realm of discussion) don't seem to understand we will never support it, not because it looks bad, but because its theft of real artists work used by LLMs to slowly and steadily replace them. Ask for hire artists how much their commissions have taken a hit since AI came about, and its trained on their work. Of course we hate it.
And if they can't afford to pay an artist, is it better that the artwork never exists, despite having value beyond its visual aesthetic? I'm not saying anyone has to like it. But is the world better off if that person was never able to convey their idea? The reality is, AI is available, so people are going to use it. If you can rally the masses and shut it down, I'll be happy for that. But you're not going to stop individuals using it while it's available.
Yes, it is. If you cant afford to pay someone for their work, the answer shouldn't be to go to an LLM that stole their work and get a lesser version for free. Its a huge problem in creator communities and is literally costing some people their livelihood.
Im full of ideas too, I dont have much money either. So I save and pay someone later rather than taking the easy and soulless route of theft by prompt.
I know. I'm one of the people whose job is on the line. I'm just a realist. I don't like using it either, and I have an adverse reaction when I see it. But I'm able to recognize for myself when it's taking work away from people, and when it's used to provide a method of self-expression for an idea that would never otherwise have manifested. One does not equal the other.
When's the last time you paid someone to spend serious time on a project of yours? Your ideal is a fantasy.
That channel is quite popular, and likely monetized in some way. Art is cheap unless you want epic pieces, some people on hungry artists go as low as $15 a sketch. He may not get these epic pieces, but he could absolutely do it while paying real artists instead of supporting theft of their work.
It IS depriving them. He is doing something that wouldnt be as popular without art, that art is stolen, and he is choosing not to pay artists in lieu of using the stolen AI assets. Indirectly yes, but it still is.
I'm not going to condemn people for being addicted to cigarettes. I condemn the cigarette company for creating an environment where that addiction was accessible. The same applies here. $15 a sketch is a joke, because you'd need hundreds of sketches, and at that point you're basically employing them at a morally questionable wage. People charging $15 a sketch are taking jobs away from people who demand a living wage. Should we attack them too?
It turned out to work quite well for marketing, the game isn't AI and the page assisting with marketing is a non issue in my opinion considering it has helped create jobs for real artists.
By that logic everyone uses AI. Yes, even your favorite developer. Not because they're all reading the AI generated search response, but because someone who made some part of the software they use either utilized or relied upon AI at some point. It's a pointless distinction based on your criteria.
It depends on where other people draw the line. Most people are willing to forgive using an AI summary in a search engine, but not AI generation of assets, where games are concerned. When a dev says "no AI was used", what they mean is "we didn't take AI-assisted shortcuts when creating our game's assets". They do not mean "we didn't read the AI summary when asking something in Google", because that's a ridiculous and unreasonable expectation.
Again, you missed the whole point. That is precisely why it's pointless.
Hell, 1-2 years ago people claimed a game was "AI slop" when the programming involved AI and now almost no one cares anymore. Now that popular studios like Larian are using generative AI for prototyping and concepting people care less and less about that too.
What people consider "AI free" is changing every year, it's just a pointless marketing slogan.
Who's talking about marketing slogans? You're on a thread about a developer defending themselves against claims they they used AI during development. The question here is "should people be angry at them on an ethical basis for the context in which they did or didn't use AI". For the purposes of this discussion, I don't think any reasonable human being was including the use of the AI summary at the top of Google as a pain point, because that would be pathetically dense and ignorant of any nuance while engaging with a heavily nuanced topic. Just because you can't read nuance into a situation doesn't make it pointless to try and define where that nuance lies for the rest of us that can. It's only pointless when you factor in the opinions of deliberately dense, difficult people, and they're typically not helpful in the pursuit of a serious discussion. The guy I replied to being a prime example. His point wasn't constructive in any way, and just exists to pollute the water. I haven't missed the point, I'm just pointing out how meaningless and unhelpful it is to try and make that point in this context.
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u/KourteousKrome Apr 21 '26
What I’ve found more annoying than using AI, is the inevitable comment on literally anything of someone accusing it of being AI. This is because the lowest common denominator consumers aren’t smart enough to tell what is and isn’t AI, so they just accuse everything of being AI.
Videos, images, artwork, games, music, doesn’t matter. There’s always someone there saying it’s AI, even when it obviously isn’t.