So IFComp puts a big “AI-generated” label on your art? Or is it just noted the same way all comp art credits are noted?
Isn’t this already the convention? You have to note whether it’s Twine or I7 or a home-brewed system. You have to credit your artwork. You have to credit any writing that isn’t yours. All these expectations exist already. Someone will surely now say that this slippery slope leads to having to credit spellcheck in MS Word, but that will be disingenuous.
A line in italics under the blurb says:
Generative artificial intelligence was used to make the cover art. See in-game credits for more information.
This is only for AI images, this is the difference!
My idea is to make it a rule instead of a convention and to say “yes, you should include spellcheck in MS Word”. That way AI use is disclosed which is what the anti-AI group want but not in a stigmatizing way, which seems to be the pro-AI group’s largest gripe.
So it is like a content warning, in the same place as CWs. I’d agree that this level of attention is overkill, but given the ferocity with which many people oppose AI-generated art in this community, it’s probably reflective of community desires. It shouldn’t be embarrassing. If you feel good about your art and how it came to be, fly the flag and let the community decide how they feel about it. Frankly, with the current community feeling about it, I’m not sure why anyone wants to test the waters there when there are so many other avenues for cover art.
Oof. Is there anyone who doesn’t use a spellcheck program? I mean, if you don’t, your game will will riddled with typos. Given that it is a community norm to spellcheck, and we carp about games that don’t use it, things like this are kind of absurd. Like crediting the alphabet itself. We are reasonable people and I’ve seen very little unreasonable discussion here, just some concerns and questions. Bottom line is that we will do what the majority of the community expects and wants, and that will annoy some people.
That’s it exactly. The rules and conventions ARE already in place. But now IFComp is making a special case for “Generative AI” (again, without defining it) and it’s akin to Crunchy Frog being forced to affix a “great red label: ‘WARNING: LARK’S VOMIT!!!’” on their confectionary.
I will also note here I am not opposed to requiring attribution or enforcing disclosure of authorship tools. I just think the way it is being handled, in this specific case, isn’t cool.
-v
I’m not sure whether the issues folks are raising are practical or just theoretical, but if it is the case that people are confused about the rules and how they apply to their submissions or potential submissions, I’ve always found the organizers to be really responsive, so dropping them a quick line can probably help clear up any confusions that are actually arising.
(I will say that while the concerns about the timing make sense to me, I don’t really understand this latest place the conversation has gone - the norm and rules for the Comp have always been to assign credit to the person responsible for the content. And that’s the way the new rule is written too - it’s all about disclosing the source of “assets”, i.e. where the words, pictures, and/or music in the game came from. I get that there can be idiosyncratic edge cases where process and substance are hard to untangle, but I don’t see how the use of Word vs an IDE vs Notepad has anything to do with anything).
The problem is not the content of the rule, which is perfectly acceptable, but the way it is handled (the timing then makes it worse).
There is a significant difference between the cover (which does not enter the game in any way), and the texts, which are an integral part of the game: they cannot be treated in the same way.
That’s how I read it: let’s agree with whoever shouts the loudest. And frankly, I don’t like it.
I have not used Grammarly in forever - it actually did help me un-train a bad habit I had with commas - but Grammarly wasn’t rewriting prose, it was pointing out “hey, maybe put a comma here…this verb form doesn’t agree numerically with the subject…you mean ‘regardless’ not “irregardless” right?”
The most stylistic suggestion I remember it giving was pointing out I’d used the same word three times in a paragraph and suggesting to consider a synonym.
I haven’t looked at it in forever so maybe it’s more now, but I always thought Grammarly’s objective was to be the English teacher suggesting grammar corrections, not trying to co-author nor change what you were writing.
Amanda simplifies it perfectly, but this is legit: a CC:0 does not require attribution, but that’s a great point to make: if the media you are using has a license and you follow it, you’re not doing anything wrong. However if IFComp has a rule about disclosing tools you do need to follow it for IFComp purposes - you can put out a non-Comp game however you want.
I sometimes do specifically seek CC:0 sound clips because it does feel eye-rolling to list credits “computer boop sound #5” and “door latch click #8” type of stuff (do it if it’s CC-BY!!!) but usually I will put something in credits like “All sound media CC:0 from freesound.org unless otherwise credited…” and a link to the Creative Commons license page. I also do bury a link list somewhere in the game so if someone asks about a sound or I need to re-create it I have the info.
Protest is sometimes necessary to affect change in the status quo. The laws that result are usually quieter.
I’ll just say something. I did not handle some of my replies well. @HanonO @AmandaB For that, I apologize.
As someone who has entered a comp and published an IF commercially, I do acknowledge that AI could be damaging to artists and writers. I am one myself. (Not a very good one, but whatever.) I do not have an answer to this problem. And yes, I did not attribute specific sources because I was lazy and realized that I had a legal way out… that is on me, but fwiw I disclosed that I used art assets under these licenses for the Spring Thing, and credited the website and license in my commercial release.
I appreciate that IFcomp tried to address this issue, even if I had some concerns about implementation, which I did not communicate well. Anyway, I might not have a dog in this fight any longer. I have just looked through my entry and I realized that I am way behind schedule. It’s two weeks to go and it’s probably not going to be done short of me rushing it… which I won’t.
So… see you at the Spring Thing next year.
Peace.
First, I mean no disrespect to the organizers of IFComp. It has been and continues to be one of the classiest competitions ever for any medium. I already listed why I have a problem with this IMHO “last minute” change, so I won’t reiterate. And it has no bearing on my work, I wasn’t planning to use generative AI for anything. I just think it’s too vague, too late, and potentially will cause some people additional hassle. So I guess from my POV, all of the points I’m raising are theoretical and like, “just my opinion, man.” I do not have practical concerns about the change.
I get that it has always been policy of the comp that credit must be assigned where credit is due. Why then is AI being treated as separate from other types of credit? I can only surmise that it is because in at least one or more prior cases someone attempted to pass off AI work as their own. If that is the case, I do not think requiring people to disclose the use of generative AI will stop someone who was willing to try to lie about it before there was a rule. But if the purpose of the new checkboxes on the submission form is so that works can be labeled and categorized as “used AI” to make it any easier or obvious for people to avoid it than content warnings are, I think that’s going too far, IMHO.
Maybe. Also maybe this is reflective of the majority. But this has been a pretty civil discussion without shouting, and on the internet. Kudos to us all.
The concerns are legit. The questioning pushback is legit. This is how IFComp is handling it for now. It’s quite clear that there is no way to make everyone happy here. I don’t personally have any problems with the use of AI-generated art and it wouldn’t stop me from playing a game. I think it’s overkill to call it out to the extent the Comp is doing. But that’s the call they’re making. You can always submit well-reasoned arguments to the organizers and see if things can be tweaked.
I guess I just don’t see the reason for using it at all, when there are so many other options for art, and when it’s a known fact that it will bounce people off your game. Whether someone agrees with the policy or not and no matter how IFComp treats it, it will cause division. And it’s not necessary.
I think as long as the concern over AI usage is that it must be easily identified by players as such, then there is no problem.
There are people who don’t want certain “types” of content in their games; add “AI generated” to that growing list. It doesn’t matter if there is a distinction between text and images being generated because it is simply a trigger warning. People who don’t want AI generated content don’t want it no matter how it was implemented.
There was a recent outcry in the game industry against a Steam game list of all Sweet Baby Inc. games. There were requests to have the list removed because it made it easy to identify all the games that company was involved with, and thus boycott said games. This is basically what the IF Comp organizers are facilitating and there is nothing wrong with that. AI generated content is not being banned; it’s being flagged.
Whichever side of the fence you happen to be on, you’ll sometimes be on the “wrong” side and sometimes you’ll be on the “right” side. As long as we aren’t banning AI generated content, there’s not much to complain about. Yeah, the timing of the decision was a little knee-jerk, but it doesn’t change what can be submitted.
I don’t think IF is necessarily the right format or market for AI.
The majority of AI content I see now is slop used by low-budget companies trying to advertise on Twitter, or content farm YouTube channels needing thumbnails. IF is not a market where we are being pressured to release as many games as possible, as fast as possible, to win money against our competitors.
A generative AI’s writing also doesn’t match what’s needed for IF at all. You need to think over every piece of text because that’s what the player has to go off of, to decide their movement and what catches their interest. Piling on redundant descriptors and unnecessary fluff makes it confusing for players. The AI outputted this because it cobbled together a description of what it thinks a text adventure output looks like; not because it’s thinking with the perspective of “what would the player do here?” like an author would.
Even using it for story ideas, I’m skeptical about. Someone who’s not going over all the input with a fine-toothed comb can end up putting content that comes off as suspiciously stereotypical. The Fortuna displayed a lot of biases with its backstories: many of the black characters said they grew up in a tough neighborhood, and the woman aboard the ship was a journalist focused on social issues.
These AI IF experiments always end up getting blasted in the ratings and highlight the flaws of the system. Even the lowest-ranked game from this year’s ParserComp was AI, and it was nearly impossible to play because it didn’t understand the most basic words despite making you type in full sentences.
Back in ye olden days of 2014 or so, when Twine was first taking off, there was an outcry against choice-based works being entered in IFComp, and a bunch of people announcing that they’d give one-star ratings if they were ever forced to play a choice-based game.
The result—apart from a new code of conduct here, because the personal attacks got nasty—is that all IFComp entries now come with a label saying if they’re parser-based, choice-based, or hybrid, so someone who really hates choice-based games doesn’t have to play them.
In the decade or so since, those labels don’t seem to have caused much of a problem. If someone can’t stand parser games, hiding the fact that your game has a parser in it isn’t going to make them like it any better.
The following is all just stream of consciousness. I’m not arguing for anything in particular. I’m not an author. Take it with a grain of salt.
One problem I see with these comparisons is that avoiding specific content (as might need a trigger warning) or not wanting to play games with a particular interface are fundamentally different things than flagging the origin of a piece of content. Is AI then to be the only origin worthy of such scrutiny? What if someone doesn’t want to see content written by women, LGBTQ authors, or ethnic minorities? Should authors with criminal backgrounds self-flag their work? I’m not suggesting anyone here would want such a thing, just that the comparison seems a lot closer than the examples given above. Given that AI output is still generally…not good, flagging it is possible, but if it continues to improve to the point you can’t reliably tell if something is AI written or not, then at that point what difference does it even make?
Edit: Clearly I offended people and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made a comparison between something technical (AI) and something intensely human (discrimination) and was only thinking of the difference between content vs. origin of content.
Note to mods: I don’t like revisionist history so I’ve struck out part of my post rather than deleting. If that is insufficient, please feel free to delete.
i have a suggestion for these people but it’s against the forum TOS
It does not.
Of course I support the disclosure in principle, except that I fear it might have a negative consequence in a hypothetical scenario where a renowned and beloved author is dutifully completing their latest opus when suddenly a striketeam of technologizers from the Society of Oil Inevitable slaps down from the ventilator shaft and forces the author at GUNPOINT to insert large chunks of Al generated text into their erstwhile masterwork, and the author pleads with them, please even though I myself can no longer tell where I end and the machine begins, my cherished community is requesting that I tick a box identifying the use of Al, but the technologizers, who categorically refuse to acknowledge any difference between humans and computers, refuse to allow this, at GUNPOINT, forcing the author, at GUNPOINT, not to disclose their use of Al, but when this work is reviewed by sage reviewers who ponder wisely the matters of the soul, they recognize that some of this text is dissonant with the characteristic stylisms of said author, and indeed deduce the possible undisclosed use of Al within the work, raising a brutal outcry against the author, who is still being held at GUNPOINT deep within a cryptowomb whilst the technologizers anoint their quivering obsolescence for the Essence Reprocess, and in the divisive flamewar to follow they are sentenced to exile and damnatio memoriae, their entire lifework unraveling before their very eyes, everyone sinning before God by choosing to humiliate this hapless author online, who among us would not weep with enlightened pity upon such beauty of innocence so cruelly crushed by online judgment mobs, who are, in their own way, holding us at GUNPOINT? Now you might be saying, Kaemi, please shut up, please, nothing you’ve said has ever been helpful to anyone, and sure that’s true, except this sort of thing happens all the time, assimilation with the machine I mean, last week I was on the phone with my cousin in Reading, Pennsylvania, and she was saying how it happens all the time that everyone she’s ever known and loved is subjugated to the subroutines by renegade futurists, at least once a month in Reading, Pennsylvania everyone she knows and loves is sewn into a circuitboard and desentienced into rewritable memory, I was like, this happens once a month, and she was like, yes, once a month, everyone I know and love becomes a machine and has their personality annihilated into repeater nodes, and I was like, but what about me, and she was like, well I meant you know everyone in town, and I was like, I was in town visiting you all in April, and she was like, oh well you know it didn’t happen then, you got lucky, because, once a month, everyone I know and love, in the area, is dehumanized into electronic-grade silicon, and I just got really silent, you know, like I know she’s never really liked me that much, but I’m trying, honestly I’m trying so hard, I don’t know what she doesn’t like about me, I’m not a bad person, maybe I’m not as exuberantly outgoing as she is, maybe l’m a little awkward, maybe I’m not so fun to go out with, maybe she feels embarrassed about me in front of her friends, yes it’s super inconvenient whenever your cousin comes to town and all your little routines are shattered while you chauffeur them about as if you even care about them, this bizarre pretension that a cousin you see once every few years is even in any meaningful sense related, honestly you’re more deeply connected to your old college friends you’ve kept up with than most of your cousins, okay, I accept all that, but it’s like, it’s still, you know, I wish I was being forced into a GPU, my hand reaching out to her in scintillating sorrow as it’s soldered into a logic circuit.
To put it bluntly, I care about the rights of human beings with thoughts and emotions much more than I care about the rights of matrices of floating-point numbers. Women, gay people, Romani people, criminals, etc are all people and ChatGPT fundamentally is not.