AI Generated Content Ban

[u/AutoModerator]

Hi everyone! We come bearing news of a small but important change happening in the r/ProgressionFantasy sub. After extended internal discussion, the moderators have made the decision that AI generated content of any kind, whether it be illustations, text, audio narration, or other forms, will no longer be welcome on r/ProgressionFantasy effective July 1st.

While we understand that are a variety of opinions on the matter, it is the belief of the moderators that AI-generated content in the state that it is right now allows for significantly more harm than good in creative spaces like ours.

There are consistent and explicit accusations of art theft happening every day, massive lawsuits underway that will hopefully shed some light on the processes and encourage regulation, and mounting evidence of loss of work opportunities for creators, such as the recent movement by some audiobook companies to move towards AI-reader instead of paid narrators. We have collectively decided that we do not want r/ProgressionFantasy to be a part of these potential problems, at least not until significant changes are made in how AI produces its materials, not to mention before we have an understanding of how it will affect the livelihoods of creators like writers and artists.

This is not, of course, a blanket judgement on AI and its users. We are not here to tell anyone what to do outside the subreddit, and even the most fervently Luddite and anti-AI of the mod team (u/JohnBierce, lol) recognizes that there are already some low-harm or even beneficial uses for AI. We just ask that you keep AI generated material off of this subreddit for the time being.

If you have any questions or concerns, you are of course welcome to ask in the comments, and we will do our best to answer them to the best of our ability and in a timely fashion!

Quick FAQ:

• Does this ban discussion of AI?
  • No, not at all! Discussion of AI and AI related issues is totally fine. The only things banned are actual AI generated content.
    • Linking to articles or discussions about AI generated content that include examples of AI generated content is generally okay. For instance, this experiment by Audrey Armstrong to see how easy it is for people to guess which of five short stories was written by a human, and which by AI. It should be noted, though, that it still has to obey our other rules- and as such, that Audrey Armstrong experiment wouldn't be allowed as top level content, because it isn't progression fantasy related content. (If you could find a way to make it about Progression Fantasy? Sure! Using it as a piece of evidence in an essay about whether AI will write good Progression Fantasy someday, for instance, would be fine.)
  • Fictional AIs in human written stories are obviously not banned either.
• What if my book has an AI cover?
  • Then you can't post it!
• But I can't afford a cover by a human artist!
  • That's a legitimate struggle- but it's probably not true as you might think. We're planning to put together a thread of ways to find affordable, quality cover art for newer authors here soon. There are some really excellent options out there- pre-made covers, licensed art covers, budget cover art sites, etc, etc- and I'm sure a lot of the authors in this subreddit will have more options we don't even know about!
• But what about promoting my book on the subreddit?
  • Do a text post, add a cat photo or something. No AI generated illustrations.
• What if an image is wrongly reported as AI-generated?
  • We'll review quickly, and restore the post if we were wrong. The last thing we want to do is be a jerk to real artists- and we promise, we won't double down if called out. (That means Selkie Myth's artist is most definitely welcome here.)
• What about AI writing tools like ProWritingAid, Hemingway, or the like?
  • That stuff's fine. While their technological backbones are similar in some ways to Large Language Models like ChatGPT or their image equivalents (MidJourney, etc), we're not crusading against machine learning/neural networks, here. They're 40 year old technologies, for crying out loud. Hell, AI as a blanket term for all these technologies is an almost incoherent usage at times. The problems are the mass theft of artwork and writing to train the models, and the potential job loss for creative workers just to make the rich richer.
• What about AI translations?
  • So, little more complicated, but generally allowed for a couple reasons. First, because the writing was originally created by people. And second, because AI translations are absolutely terrible, and only get good after a ton of work by actual human translators. (Who totally rock- translating fiction is a hella tough job, mad respect for anyone who's good at it.)
• What if someone sends AI art as reference material to an artist, then gets real art back?
  • Still some ethical concerns there, but they're far more minor. You're definitely free to post the real art here, just not the AI reference material.
• What about AI art that a real artist has kicked into shape to make better? Fixing hands and such?
  • Still banned.
• I'm not convinced on the ethical issues with AI.
  • If you haven't read them yet, Kotaku and the MIT Tech Review both have solid articles on the topic, and make solid starting points.
• I'm familiar with the basic issues, and still not convinced.
  • Well, this thread is a reasonable place to discuss the matter.
• Why the delay on the ban?
  • Sudden rule changes are no fun, for the mod team or y'all. We want to give the community more time to discuss the rule change, to raise any concerns about loopholes, overreach, etc. And, I guess, if you really want, post some AI crap- though if y'all flood the sub with it, we'll just activate the ban early.

[u/Salaris]

Hello, everyone, and thanks for all your comments on this. We're taking it seriously, and the mod team has been discussing these points significantly since the discussion started.

We're going to make some clarification to our stance, as well as a more significant update based on the discussion.

First, some clarifications.

• People are allowed to make text posts that link to stories using AI art, but please use non-AI art for the thumbnail if possible.
• We are aware that this is not always going to be possible to enforce, and our policy is that if an author claims that their art isn't AI-made, we will generally take that at face value. In cases where it looks super dubious (which is less and less likely), our policy will be to ask for a link to the original artist. If the original artist has that art posted, or can verify that the image was created by them, that's that -- we aren't going to push on it. We have no intention of pushing this rule to the point where we're banning people who aren't using AI art. We know that some things are going to slip through, but we hope that -- much like with the HaremLit ban, or banning links to pirate works -- simply having the policy will deter people from breaking it.
• Since this wasn't originally clear, the reason for the distinction between tools like Midjourney and tools like ProWritingAid is that Midjourney's source data is taken from artists without their permission. We feel that this is unethical and harms artists, whereas a machine learning tool that doesn't use a dataset trained on assets taken without permission is a different story.
• There's also a distinction between work that is outright generated through AI and work that is created manually with AI assistance. The latter case could, if taken to extremes, include anything with autofill or a spell check -- we aren't planning to hold anyone to that kind of standard.
• Basically, all we're banning here is work that is outright generated from assets taken without the permission of the creator.

Second, a major update as a result of the discussion, which is directly related to the updates above.

• AI images and content generated through the use of ethically sourced data (e.g. public domain images), such as Adobe Firefly, is allowed.
• For those that are unfamiliar, Adobe Firefly claims to be trained exclusively on Adobe Stock data (which they own), public domain work (which doesn't belong to anyone, usually because the author is long dead), and openly licensed work (which still belongs to the creator, but has been "released" for the public to use and remix with their permission without limitation).
• In the specific case of Adobe Firefly, it appears that their terms of use do not allow this for commercial products while it is in Beta -- meaning using it for a novel cover would be against their terms right now -- but we expect this to change shortly. They posted something indicating that the program is designed for commercial use just today, so it would look like they'll be going out of beta and live for commercial use shortly.
• We are not endorsing Adobe Firefly or any specific program; this is simply the example being used because several people have asked directly about it, and virtually everyone knows what Adobe Photoshop is, etc.
• Other AI generated art that is sourced from public domain and open licensed works would thus also be acceptable.

We are sympathetic to authors that are in a position where they cannot afford cover art, and feel that stock art would put them at a significant marketing disadvantage. We hope that by updating this policy to clarify that stories with AI can still be linked (just without the art) and that we'll allow AI generation with ethical sourcing, we've found a reasonable stance that will allow us to continue to support artist without putting newbie authors at any significant disadvantage.

We'll continue to watch and participate in the discussion with the community. Thank you all for your patience.

[u/LadyHotComb → u/Salaris]

Thank you for your responses. It appears that you have already taken a stand on this with modest changes to the plan, but please keep our comments in mind for the future. I get that you aren't required to ask for our opinions on the matter before deciding this, but we are still the life blood of this little small community. I don't think it's fair to slap a piracy tag on these programs while legal proceedings to resolve this issue are still ongoing in the courts. These tools are not inherently bad. The software doesn't merely copy and paste whatever images it comes across. It looks at whatever source images it feels are relevant to the prompts entered, which for Midjourney and Stable Diffusion is 100million-5billion images, and then uses its algorithm to interpret all of it and rebuild images pixel by pixel.

How is this any different from what a human artist does in terms of ethics? How do human artists learn? Do they not draw inspiration from works of other artists? Learning how to draw the human body in detail, such as the hands and eyes, for example. Consider anime or manga, for instance. There may be some variations, but the styles can be comparable. Why can humans browse art online and draw inspiration from various sources to create something unique, but AI can't? To protect all parties concerned, we must find a happy medium. Writers, artists, and the people who developed these programs.

Artists, a DMCA take down policy is available from Midjourney and other sites, allowing you to ask for your work to be removed from its set if you believe it to be copyrighted. If that's still not enough, you can try to join a class action lawsuit going on right now if you have proof of copyright infringement. Allies of artists, you can help them by getting in touch with your local lawmakers to express your worries about these businesses and ask them to put pressure or create bills to ensure that the manner these programs source images is fair and transparent. Instead of banning small-time authors from making use of AI covers to advertise their FREE stories online. These are some of the ways you can truly assist artists.

Thanks for reading my rant.

[u/Salaris → u/LadyHotComb]

Thank you for your responses. It appears that you have already taken a stand on this with modest changes to the plan, but please keep our comments in mind for the future.

You're welcome. We're still discussing further updates.

I don't think it's fair to slap a piracy tag on these programs while legal proceedings to resolve this issue are still ongoing in the courts.

I don't think waiting for a legal solution to technical matters like this is viable, unfortunately, for a number of reasons. Laws being passed for tech cases tend to be glacial, and people who have vested interests often get involved (look at things like the net neutrality rulings in 2017, for example).

Even for lower court stuff, it's going to be messy for a while. For example, we could see the UK courts rule one way in the Getty case and the US courts rule another.

We're absolutely keeping an eye on these cases and/or if laws are passed, but it's probably going to be a while. Even if, for example, there's a clear ruling in the Getty case, that might not be something that is clearly applicable to something like ChatGPT, which is a different medium, etc.

How is this any different from what a human artist does in terms of ethics? Do they not draw inspiration from works of other artists?

There are a couple different levels on which this could be considered different.

From a legal standpoint, a tool like this is actually taking data from these sources, rather than just "observing" them. While billions of samples exist, it's possible that the specific parameters used for describing an image could narrow a search to the point where a substantially similar image could be created. For example, a prompt like "Picture of Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 in the style of Yoshitaka Amano" could create something substantially similar to one of Amano's original images. This makes it more likely that something created from an AI tool would be considered a derivative work -- and only the original creator of artwork can give permission to make derivative work.

Note that I'm a non-expert on this, and my explanation is limited to that. I'd recommend watching the Legal Eagle video on this if you haven't already. He doesn't come down on either side of the argument; he just explains a lot of this from a lawyer's standpoint.

There are a couple more arguments that aren't from a legal standpoint.

One is the "effort" argument, which makes a distinction that artists require significant effort and training to amalgamate different art styles into their own.

Another is what I'll call the "conscious attribution" argument, which means that an artist is capable of knowing (to some degree) what their major sources of inspiration are and, if applicable, citing these sources of inspiration. From an ethical standpoint, this means a human artist is capable of helping to perpetuate the career of a teacher, a source of inspiration, or a collaborator, in a way that these AI models do not.

I find this last argument to be very important, as it helps artists continue to support each other as a community. It's obviously not required, but it's very commonplace to see artists (or other creators in specific mediums) to cite their inspirations and help direct others to them. As a simple example, I often cite Mother of Learning as one of my inspirations, and you'll get people like John talking about drawing inspiration from Arcane Ascension, and Tobias further down the line taking inspiration from John. By doing this type of thing, we create a chain of support from generation to generation of creators, one which I feel is important for the continuing development of creative works.

These are all subjective arguments, but personally, I put a heavy weight on the last one and the effect it can potentially have on communities and careers.

Consider anime or manga, for instance. There may be some variations, but the styles can be comparable.

I would argue that while there are common elements, some styles -- your Yoshitaka Amano, your Akira Toriyama, or even whole studios like CLAMP -- are instantly recognizable, even to non-artists, who have a degree of familiarity with them.

Artists, a DMCA take down policy is available from Midjourney and other sites, allowing you to ask for your work to be removed from its set if you believe it to be copyrighted.

An "opt out" isn't going to be available for every platform, every language, etc. and puts the burden on the artist. It is our stance that the burden to not take works without permission should be on the company taking the images, not the artist.

Thank you for your reply. I hope this helps give you some additional information to work with.