You win the internet. 
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I agree that anyone can choose to not play any game for any reason, but I really don’t think that’s the way that side of the argument is being framed.
Like I don’t think it’s unreasonable when you’re being accused of everything from destroying an industry to forcing artists into abusive relationships to speak up for yourself. Like literally right upthread someone is suggesting that maybe it might be a good idea to target me because it might be good for community unity.
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Target you, like come to your house and hurt you? Or target you, like not play your games? Because if someone wants to target you by not playing your games, that’s OK. It just is. Nobody has to like you or your positions or your games. Plenty of people have said they won’t play my games because of subject matter. Is that targeting me?
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I think being boycotted implies being targeted, yes.
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I think you’ve explained your position well here, and I mostly agree with you. But if someone wants to boycott you, why is it so upsetting? I’d hope they’d go on social media and LOUDLY boycott me, because then everybody would want to play my game. A boycott is great PR. I think the word “target” is really inflammatory, though, as it implies violence, and that’s why I’m being such a meddler here.
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Are you seriously asking why it’s upsetting to be accused of destroying an industry?
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It goes beyond people taking a principled stand not to play games that include software-generated content. Threats have been made to sabotage people’s entries into Jams if they use or are suspected of using generative AI in their submission or they are known to have used AI in a previous unrelated game.
There has also been lots of labelling people who use AI as thieves, exploitative, cheats, plagiarists, etc. Most of us here just want to bring our ideas to life and share games that we make and share freely with like-minded hobbyists.
So yes, I think it’s a fair use of ‘targeted’ with all the connotations it carries.
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Yes, I’m seriously asking. I think everyone knows you are not personally destroying an industry by being open to AI. Feelings are obviously hot about this topic, and hyperbole will always get thrown around. Some people disapprove strongly of your positions. I don’t see that anyone has called you a bad person or accused you of arguing in bad faith. If you are genuinely offended by this, then of course I can’t talk you out of that. But I think this could be a really productive conversation if we all just settled down a little (and I do mean everyone) and recognized that we’re all doing the best we can with the information we have, and that we all want what’s good for IF, even if we disagree on how to do that. But seeing as how this is the internet, maybe that won’t happen. I will totally quit bugging you now, because I don’t want to pile on you. Again, I think your arguments are good ones.
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Has that happened here? In the IF community? Because of course I will reconsider my objection to the word if that’s the case.
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I understand what you’re saying. My observation is that one side of the argument is framing their position in terms of ultimatums and one is not, and you’re asking the one who is not to be more reasonable.
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Sadly, yes. However, I think that position has just been taken out of frustration that they are unable to target the companies adopting generative AI to automate creative functions within their business and causing the issues around job security about which they feel so strongly. My hope is that once the dust settles, they will not follow through on that threat, nor I hope will anyone abandon a hobby they love simply because IF authors are exploring new ways to enhance and to expedite the creation of their games.
But even if the threats and pejorative labelling were hollow heat-of-the-moment posts, it’s still disappointing to see the community turn on itself like this.
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I’ve set this thread to “slow mode” which I’ve not used before, so it’s an experiment. The thread will only accept a reply once every 30 minutes as I’ve got it set to promote thoughtful replies instead of quick reaction.
The topic has wandered afield from “AI Art” to “AI in general”. Now people are assuming “attacks” and I believe the thread has run its course and everyone’s opinion is clear.
If the thread continues to cause problems it will be closed for good.
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Well, we don’t have to.
/mushy emotion on/
I’d like to say that I recognize that everyone on this board arguing any side of this is doing what they believe is right, and I have a lot of respect for everyone here and I take their points seriously, whether or not I agree with them. This is the only online community I’ve ever really belonged to, precisely because I think the people here speak in good faith and have IF’s-- and each other’s-- best interests at heart. I treasure it, and how so many people of such diverse backgrounds and opinions come together to make these wonderful stories and share them with us.
/mushy emotion off/
Now let’s fucking quit fighting.
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As I’m the user who brought this up- I felt it pertinent to add that if I do pack up and go, there’s a thriving Tumblr IF community that I’m already plugged into. Less so abandoning a beloved hobby and more so shifting focus towards a group in better alignment with my morals. For now, as you mentioned, the dust is still settling.
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Anyone is of course free to leave. But wouldn’t it be better to stay and speak your opinion within the limits of the community to try to spread your viewpoint?
Thought Example: IFComp 2025 has 20% games with AI Art and 80% without for many reasons. Perhaps 50% considered AI art but decided against it because the implications are too big at the moment as regulation isn’t really in place yet.
Then you are also boycotting a lot of people who agrees on your viewpoint against AI art, though they may disagree about the boycott?
For the case you are fighting, I think it would be better to stay.
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This has been something I’ve been contemplating. This thread has thrashed the topic half to death, and stances seem pretty solidified on both ends of the aisle. I’m doubtful of one person’s ability to influence community norms, particularly with such stringently held viewpoints on each side.
I’ve certainly learned a lot about people and their stances on the topic. I don’t normally engage in discourse threads like this, but felt morally compelled to speak on something that I hold dear to my heart. It’s been an eye opener, if nothing else.
Still, as you point out, people are capable of change, and it would catch a lot of people in the crossfire. It would be a shame. I would miss many of the regulars here, several I’ve come to respect and admire, many who don’t uphold a social media presence elsewhere.
I do really have a soft spot for this community: it’s why I’ve been so open to talking about it and sharing it with my friends from other spaces. Some of the games made by people here have been wildly influential to me- baby’s first parser, and all. And the positivity thread has become something of a cozy corner of the internet. People have been kind, encouraging- spontaneously, even. There are good people here.
Things are still settling. I have the contact information of my closest friends I’ve made on here. I’ll wait and consider things further. I do appreciate your input, though. It wouldn’t be something easily done.
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Given this is interactive fiction and works aren’t set in stone, is there much to be gained if a work had AI images in it, but offered the user the option of removing them entirely from the experience?
This wouldn’t help with normalising their use, but might offer an infinitesimally better option than “play vs boycott”.
This option is probably untenable for textual uses of LLMs, though.
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You don’t have to change a whole community to have an effect. I live in rural Texas, which is a nasty, horrible place politically. It’s truly awful. But I’m a Texan, goddamnit, and I am going to vote here instead of somewhere that doesn’t need my vote, and I am not going to go away. Almost 100% of my immediate neighbors are as far from me politically as it is possible to be. But I help them when they need help, and they do the same. That has taught me that although I can’t imagine ever coming to terms with them about how we do things here, I don’t have to come to terms with them. I don’t have to have things my way to live here. I can just keep showing them that people like me are good people, and that I belong here, too. And I can keep respectfully stating my opinions when it’s appropriate to do so. And maybe over time that will broaden all of our horizons-- mine as well as theirs.
Now that I read back over that, it probably sounds dreadful to many people. But it’s how I’ve decided to reconcile my beliefs and morals with my home.
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Amanda, thank you for taking the time out of your day to respond to this. You are one of the people I mentioned in the above post that I would sincerely miss, and who I have come to both appreciate and admire.
From your delightful posts about the hummingbirds and wildflowers, to the skill in your work, and the fantastic IF adaptation of one of my own poems that still makes me a bit weepy to think about, I have come to really value your insight and contributions to this board and community.
I really appreciate you sharing your perspective on this with me.
Much to think about.
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At the risk of stirring a mostly-settled pot, and possibly just restating a point that’s been made in some of the posts that I only skim-read (my family all had COVID over the last two weeks, I haven’t been keeping up), here’s the way I’m thinking about this debate as it applies to our little corner of the world:
First, I totally get the argument that it’s frustrating to fight over the uses of “AI” that make $0 for their creators while tacitly endorsing, with patronage as well as dollars, the often-bad-acting corporations that funded these things, created these things (via means that maybe weren’t technically plagiarism but don’t strike me as wholly ethical either), and will profit from these things. Certainly boycotts in a tiny amateur space like ours will do nothing to create reasonably regulation for these tools – heck, even actions directly aimed at that, like policy advocacy and IP lawsuits, seem to me only likely to be marginally successful given the overall acquiescence of our society to Silicon Valley’s move-fast-and-break-things model.
With that said, it does seem to me that there’s a real human downside to the widespread adoption of this stuff, inevitable though the logic of late capitalism might make it. Heck, even the benign cases have a dystopian air to them – like, one of the places ChatGPT is getting used right now is to help doctors crank out appeal letters contesting insurance companies’ claim denials. It’s good that they’ll have more time to spend with patients than on paperwork, but at the same time, it’s not too hard to see a blackly-comic future coming into shape where our health care system becomes two robots arguing with each other about who gets to have medical treatment.
The market is going to deliver us some awful results in the guise of efficiency, in other words, even leaving aside the impact on creative fields, with the ineluctable imperatives of making more widgets for cheaper claiming folks’ livelihoods while removing opportunities for human decision-making from all sorts of systems.
But the nice thing about being a set of people who make mostly-short games made up mostly just of words for basically no money is that we don’t have to go along with all of that. Like if there was ever any community well set up to nope out of this future, it’d be us. So to the extent that you find the prospect of “AI” tools mushrooming up everywhere to be potentially dehumanizing and bad, it makes perfect sense to me to try to do that here, rather than in the economy at large.
Would there be downsides to having a strong norm against use of AI tools in the IF community? Sure! I’m personally indifferent to graphics, but I know lots of people, both players and authors, like 'em, and there’s an opportunity cost of either forgoing them, spending development time on them, or spending money to commission them (as to text generation tools, I admit to having a harder time finding any negatives to not using them) in IF. So I get the complaint that it’s annoying to have people opt out of your game because you can only realize your vision by using one of these tools.
At the end of the day, though, we’re either going to wind up with a norm that this stuff is fine to use – and therefore as newer people enter the community, they’ll do more and more of it, until it becomes the default – or some other norm. I’m not sure I’d prefer us to land at a total ban, personally, since to my mind there’s a difference between say someone who’s not artistically inclined using Midjourney to bang out the expected cover-art for an IF Comp entry, and having a game with omnipresent AI art. But I certainly would like it better if we landed closer to that side than the anything-goes one.
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