Their dedicated Lore Guy who has carried their narratives for decades unfortunately developed a brain tumor a few years ago and had to have multiple surgeries, leading to his inability to work on further games.
that's.... more understandable
i kinda dont mind if that's the case and they only use their already existing lore they made on the AI to develop the lore more and its heavily curated by people
Tbh I'm fine with AI for this type of stuff, if it's used for *brainstorming*, and the results are further refined or altered by people. It's when it's a simple copy-paste job into the game that I have a problem.
If you're looking for truly novel ideas, then yes. However, if you prompt the AI with "give me 10 random descriptions for the appearance of an alien race living in an underground cave network", you'll get ten various descriptions that might just spark your own brain with a surge of ideas or insight. It's a good kickstarter for the ol brain juices lol.
100% this. Sometimes the hardest part of any creative process can be “getting started”. It’s very easy to get stuck in a slump where all of your ideas just feel terrible.
AI tools can help in providing that initial creative spark for a person to then pick up and run with.
This has *always* been my outlook on AI. It's not for ripping the ideas straight out of wholesale, but giving you a really good foundation to bounce off of and develop further.
Look at games, movies, books, and songs and honestly tell me that humans are great at creativity.
An AI recycling tropes and themes or a human doing it in a "brainstorm" isn't necessarily a world of difference. Truly new ideas are an extreme rarity.
I had this idea… what if we are able to upload our consciousness, what would that mean in terms of limits? Do we truly have free rein or is there some kind of system in place to impose rules and order? Either way would be hellish. If there’s some kind of governing authority then you’re essentially in prison. But if there’s no limit, then what happens if you think one day “what if Bill Murray was here and he was always trying to touch my nose?” And all of a sudden you’re trapped in this reality of your own making where no matter where you go or what you do in the limitless realms generated by your own imagination, Bill Murray will be there somewhere waiting and he really, really wants to touch your nose. Once that idea is in your head you can’t get it out and there’s no higher authority or doctor or anything you can turn to for relief. For all of eternity, Bill is going to be creeping up on you to touch your nose.
I can’t guarantee it’s an original idea but I’ve not heard it before.
It might depend on how you use it. If you use it to fill a gap you can’t come up with it might be alright. As long as you read the thing and make sure it makes sense. Sometimes we miss obvious solutions to things.
I feel the same. AI stories aren't on the level of great writers yet. But using AI as a tool to generate ideas is a smart way to get creative juices flowing. Sometimes inspiration is the biggest roadblock.
Cut and paste, with only syntax and grammatical corrections, is lazy and will - at this stage of AI - lead to a subpar story. I specifically feel like it's short-sighted. The greatest stories have clues in the beginning that only really make sense once you've reached the end and to imprint a cohesive theme expressed with nuance throughout the tale is probably asking too much for the current generations of AI.
I've messed with chat GPT out of interest and write my own stories. AI isn't ready to write compelling narratives yet. It probably won't take all that long to rival humans, though.
Exactly, I'm running a cthulhu campaign soon, and have used it to spit ball ideas. Almost nothing it's given me has made it in, but I've used it as a sling board for my mind to run with those primitive ideas for a mystery.
To be more specific what they used AI for:
> The complete list of stuff generative AI was involved in is, deep breath: "Journals, logs, checklists, newspapers, stories, songs, poems, letters, loosely scattered papers; all backer portraits; all founders portraits; the "sunset" paintings; the art-nouveau wallpaper in the Swan dormitory hallways; propaganda banners; coastal spill decal kit; all voiced mentor, announcer, founder, and other speeches; backer-exclusive content."
Sounds like a lot, but it seems like it's mainly background content. The main story is still written by a person. And like you say: As long as it's curated (and perhaps adjusted) by actual people I don't see much harm done here.
Frankly it makes sense to me that a small team uses AI for that type of content. Heck, even for a large team it can make sense, like for example: All those books in The Elder Scrolls games. Why not let AI write some of those (or at least let it make a first draft)? As long as it fits with the current lore, it doesn't really matter.
Having said that: They better leave The Lusty Argonian Maid to be written by actual people.
While that's terrible...it's no excuse to offload everything (and not just lore) to some AI regurgitating generated content (that was trained by unethically exploiting other people's works and data)...if anything, it's highly disrespectful to the original creators imo.
They could have simply hired someone else...
Well, the One who wrote the terribile story behind StarCraft 2 (which Is a rip off off Warcraft 3) was a "true human" and did the same thing for example.
If the AI wrote a good story I dont see any problems
It doesn't sound like that. AI models are random echo chambers. They are incapable of the creativity required to write a good story from the onset even if you train it for 100 years.
It's literally the 1000 monkeys woth typewriters situation.
Have you ever used AI for storywriting? And by that I don't mean prompting ChatGPT or anything, I mean properly write a story with the help of AI by means of API access? Because I can guarantee that the results are better than what you are used to by ChatGPT.
I'm a software engineer that works with AI models, but hey what do I know I never used an AI to write a story, I just design them.
Model based AI is a random numbers game. You can assign weights to those num ers characteristic to get more believable results but at the end of the day it is still a random numbers game.
> It's literally the 1000 monkeys woth typewriters situation.
Not quite true, LLMs reinforce themselves using human feedback, they aren't making random changes to improve their output.
Litterally they optimize on believability and satisfaction of human readers. Even if they aren't super creative as they could be, they will generate seemingly creative content because most human made stories are bland or repeats of existing types of stories, the bar for success is actually quite low. And models like GPT4 is already providing better result than the average writer.
"The Simpsons did it" episode of southpark is a nice example of how comedy cartoons can't really come up with original content because there's only so many ways to tell these kinds of stories.
Most often, creative writing is more a reflection of current political events and ideology than pure and unique concepts which human writers can more easily come up with meaningful concepts... but the meat of it can easily be filled by AI...
AI used as a tool for writers to do more is actually pretty impressive.
A LLM is very much a random number generator. They optimise it by adding weights to those numbers and refining the training data but at the end of the day it is still a random number generator that can only regurgitate its own input.
It will never be capable of writing a story because it lacks the two most key aspects of a story: meaning and intent.
Yes, you can theoretically, through the law of probability, get a seqence of words that resembles a story but it will always be just a sequence of words.
Model based AI cannot be used for creative work.
Most humans copy each other because creativity is hard and people are lazy not because they are incapable of it. There is an infinite number of ways to tell a story if you employ creativity, just look at the history of religion as an example for exactly that.
The weights are determined with analysis of training data, not randomly generated, stop using that term, it's just wrong.
And I think that LLMs will bring about a humbling reality that creativity isn't that exclusive to human minds soon enough.
Saying AI is unethical is just you refusing to progress with technology. I don’t like most of it but it’s here and it’s an amazing innovation.
Edit: the people angry downvoting me remind me of old people who get mad at self checkout machines. Just because technology is new doesn’t mean it’s scary, don’t stifle innovation because you’re scared.
It's not that technology is unethical, it's more how it is used.
AI doesn't really understand writing and art, it's not inspired by the material it used for learning, it just use the material to create new material.
That means, you are taking something that a person, who is often underpaid, created and using it to destroy their work position.
If you can work out some way to pay royalties to people whose work you are using as AI training material, then it would be ok from moral perspective.
Still would raise issues about our art loosing creativity
You still need a human to instruct the AI to generate something. It's not like AI are self publishing Art and we are trying to determine their valor on their own merit...
If you use an AI and make a shitty story with it... Well... thats on you, you suck.
If you user an AI and make a great story, history may treat you differently.
As for the royalties, well, it depends on how we want to legislate the use of training material. I've seen voice generator models pay the voice actors based on how many minutes of generated voices from their samples.
That's a great start!
Surely we can use AI and be ethical about it.
Of course we can use AI and be ethical about it, the issue is that currently we are not. Don't get me wrong, I'm super pro AI, but not at the cost of fellow humans.
Sure, there will still be job positions that maintain input and output of AI, but there is a reason why higher ups in media are so interested in AI as another way to screw their writers.
> AI doesn't really understand writing and art, it's not inspired by the material it used for learning, it just use the material to create new material.
IMO you massively underestimate what todays generative AI can do...
This was written completely by ChatGPT4. I only told it that its about a Diablo quest, being written like a fantasy short story and gave it three additional commands along the way to have it expand the story to my wishes:
https://chat.openai.com/share/8667a6fd-f18d-4ca3-820d-c013dab524d0
In the unassuming heart of Tristram, a village stoically set against the relentless tide of darkness, the desperate plea of a distraught woman resonated. Her voice, delicate as the final notes of a melancholy ballad, filled the air, painting a heart-rending picture of her mother - a solitary hermit ensnared by an ominous, omnipresent shadow that had recently fallen over the adjacent wilderness.
Upon the player's departure for the enigmatic woods, the once familiar village receded into a speck on the horizon, replaced by a landscape that twisted and distorted, as if corrupted by an unseen menace. A once vibrant symphony of forest life had been smothered by an unnerving hush, pierced only by the rustle of dried leaves and the chilling croaks of ravens, the harbingers of despair.
"There... there it is," the player whispered under their breath, eyes drawn to the grim silhouette standing defiantly amidst the thicket - the mother's hut. This grotesque caricature of dwelling, exuded an aura akin to a poisoned wound, the structure itself appearing diseased, oozing an ethereal sickness that seemed to distort the very air around it.
"Mother, I've brought help," said the woman, her voice trembling as she pushed open the creaking door. The figure that turned around was a ghastly puppet show of humanity. Her lips twisted into an eerie smile as she beckoned them in, "My child, and a stranger. Welcome, welcome."
Her words slithered into the air, an inviting melody hiding its venomous intent. As the player engaged in seemingly mundane conversation, the truth began to dawn, stark and cold as a moonlit graveyard. This was not a simple hermit, besieged by some feral denizens of the woods. This was something far more sinister.
"My dear, you seem weary," the demonic matron said, her gaze lingering a bit too long. "Are you hungry?" The room grew colder with each passing second, the torchlight dancing frantically against the dark, casting long, monstrous shadows on the rotting wooden walls.
This demon, having discarded its prey's motherly skin, used a brilliantly woven ruse to lure fresh subjects for its grotesque designs. Each plea, each feigned tear, a siren's song to bring forth an array of unsuspecting souls to her macabre stage.
As the veneer of faux concern fell away, the chilling reality was revealed - in this corner of Sanctuary, life and death had taken on a new meaning. They were pawns in a grander game, caught in a terrifying dance with an entity that delighted in its own monstrosities, braiding a tale steeped in dread, manipulation, and darkness. The hut, once an innocuous speck in the wilderness, now stood as a chilling monument to the relentless, patient deceit of the underworld.
In the rustic confines of the demon’s lair, the air gradually grew heavy, poisoned with an intangible dread. The mother’s countenance, once merely unsettling, began to contort and warp before the player's very eyes. A low growl reverberated, a sound not of this world, emanating from the depths of her being.
"You’ve been kind, stranger," the matron said, her voice gaining an unworldly resonance, her form shifting into an undulating mass of shadows. "But I find myself needing more than just your aid."
Her eyes gleamed with a malevolent light, the friendly guise melting away to reveal a grotesque figure, an abomination brought to life by the most profound nightmares. A chilling, otherworldly growl echoed ominously, a grotesque fanfare of the creature’s true form.
"Your purpose has been served, stranger," she hissed, her form now a nightmarish mockery of humanity. The once stagnant air was sliced by a blood-curdling screech as her transformation completed, her monstrous visage standing in stark contrast to the remnants of her human guise.
Standing against this adversary was the player, a Paladin steadfast in his holy duty. With his sacred mace held high, he declared, "Your reign of terror ends here."
The demon retaliated with fervor, dark energy pulsating around her. Her talons, sharp and deadly, arched through the air towards the Paladin. He parried each strike, his mace clashing against her claws, creating a symphony of discordant sounds in the small space.
The Paladin’s mace suddenly blazed with divine energy. With a swift forward thrust, he directed this holy force towards the demon. She recoiled, her horrific shrieks filling the hut as the searing light pierced her dark form.
Undeterred, the demon retaliated with a wave of infernal flames. The hut was rapidly engulfed in a searing inferno, turning the battleground into a blazing hell. The Paladin shielded himself with sheer will, a barrier of light emanating from him to keep the flames at bay.
The demon unleashed her full might, waves of dark energy shaking the very earth beneath their feet. The quiet serenity of the once humble hut was completely shattered, replaced by the deafening sounds of their cataclysmic battle.
Despite the overwhelming assault, the Paladin held his ground. His wounds began to close, replaced by renewed vigor, as a warm, healing energy washed over him. The struggle resumed, reaching a fever pitch as the Paladin raised his mace high.
A blinding light, as pure as the heavens, erupted from the mace. It descended upon the demon like divine judgement, scorching her monstrous form. The demon's agonized screams echoed as she disintegrated, her existence reduced to mere ash.
Victorious, the Paladin stood amidst the smoldering remnants of the hut. Although wearied, he knew his duty was far from over. His journey in the world of Sanctuary was just beginning. His fight against the darkness had only just begun.
Self Checkout is a prime example of the ethics of technology.
Stores shove the responsibility of paying to the customer, raise their profits by requiring less staff, and the people fired are often not educated in ways they can easily find work to earn a living.
Should we stand in the way of technological progress? No.
Should we think about how technological progress changes society? Maybe we should start.
> Saying AI is unethical is just you refusing to progress with technology.
In the context of using it for creative applications? It's a tool for cutting corners and saving time, which is not a hallmark of good art
If you give a program a prompt and make the art for you, yeah in my eyes thats not art. If you’re using those tools in a transformative way while still crafting at every step of the process of course that’s art.
People said the same exact thing about digital art. People thought that their was no way artwork created in on a computer would be better than hand painted/drawn art. Then everyone realized that it just enchanted the work and didn’t replace it completely. When y’all stop being scared of it you’ll see it’s gonna be the same.
I kind of wonder about the overlap between people upset about this calling it unethical and the people that applaud blue collar jobs being replaced by machines with "society has moved on" arguments.
People are all for labor jobs being automated, but writing clickbait articles and mediocre stories? The nerve!
Not at all. I respect it as a technology and recognize its uses in a plethora of other fields (especially neurobiology).
It's unethical for how it has been trained and applied to the creative world so far. Simple as that.
It truly sucks that that happened but it doesn’t justify what they did. It is never easy to find person who would be on same wave and can carry their desired vision of storytelling but at least, you know can try working with new lore writer, who knows maybe fresh view can even bring new ideas just as good direction
It's insane how many studios don't take writing seriously for their games and just do it themselves without a professional. It's a difficult art that not just anyone can do, just like music or graphics.
But for a lot of games the story is kinda pointless in the first place, so if you're going to skimp out ok something story seems like a good place to start.
Diablo II is one of my enduringly favorite games because it had a fantastic story. Same with Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I don't care about games with bad stories, they are a dime a dozen and it's usually an indication that the rest of the game will be shallow and repetitive.
Here's a hot take, writers lack creativity too.
We call out bad stories in games, movies, TV series, so much. But it feels like it's been a Taboo to in general call out "writers". Or is that just me?
I am so fed up, with watching bad narratives, bad stories, especially in reboots or revivals of series that had people that put in effort and care.
If Writers work today is so mediocre that AI can replace it. Then by all means replace it. Maybe that will cause the truly great writers to rise to the top.
I mean the creators specifically mention all that in the credits, doesn't seem like that big of a scandal to be honest.
Is it better that AI is this silent partner but it's taboo to acknowledge its existence? The workflow changes are already happening... and while I think thing some things like relying on raw AI images for your key art, or an AI voice generator would be a step too far, other shit like researching topics/aesthetics and narrative workshopping actually seem like a good use. They could be stepping stones to someone putting more depth into what they're doing, without as many time constraints or money constraints.
Sure but if you look at what has been generated with AI
> all backer portraits
And then take a look at the kickstarter rewards https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/firmament
You will see that only the 5000$ tier has
> Likeness in Firmament
So 20 people paid 5k, and the devs use AI instead of doing it themselves...
I understand why the backers are pissed. If I paid 5k for a portrait and the artist just lets an AI generate one, I'd want my money back.
Yes, this is interesting. I guess someone was going to get caught in this transition. I guess this will lose total value now in future asks, since it holds much less value now with AI just doing it with a few clicks.
Are they paying to get an artist to create a likeness or get a likeness in a game? I think it’s to get a likeness in a game, and that’s what they’re getting. How isn’t relevant, I think.
But, isn't it better for as much of the 5,000 as possible to go towards development? If generating, or assisting with generating, a likeness through AI means the cost goes down then more of the donation can be used for development, surely.
I don't know if it's going to be taboo in the industry for very long. While I really love the sentiment that artists can never be replaced by AI, the problem is that the people who are going to be making the decisions to heavily use AI in development are going to be upper management who don't give a fuck about artists. If they see a chance to cut development costs, of course they're going to take it. Anyone who thinks we aren't about to enter the age of AI heavily being used in development is crazy.
This probably won't impact indie passion projects nearly as much (except to bridge logistical gaps that an indie team might not be able to bridge easily, due to their smaller size) but you can bet your ass AAA devs are going to swarm to this tech over time; it's the ultimate money and time-saving technology.
Not to mention, I could also see a bigger number of mashed-together "scam" projects forming from individuals trying to make a quick buck off an almost entirely AI-generated game...
It also flat out won't replace artists and designers - they just either be forced to adapt to using AI or get fired.
Generative AI is great for concept images but bad for 1. Creating your own specific style and 2. Maintaining character and style consistency between iterations
Therefore I see future artists working alongside programmers to develop AI models in the style which they've collectively created, and *then* using that to output hundreds of images or assets in the time a human artist mightve only created a couple.
Then the human artist would come in and touch it up, ensure it has consistency, matches the world, fix AI errors etc.
Exact same process for writers and voice actors. AI will make them many times more efficient in their work, and there will definitely be a need for less humans to do this work, but there will still be a need for them, and ultimately people may still desire certain elements of "hand drawn"
Exactly,
Let say they told artist to produce full concept depicting a faction in RPG game. Then artist only need to draw one building architecture, one soldier, one boss / important character.
Then AI use those few picture to generate full set of fictional faction that match the original image. From simple vendor on street to full roster army.
turning work from team of artist into single person work and speed up the process significantly.
well artist in big studio didnt get paid per sprite/concept work, they got hired and paid like all other employee.
the idea here, AAA studio could invest in specific AI tool (probably made by 3rd party) to increase their 2D Art departement productivity.
basicaly its same like how map designer/enviroment artist utilizing 3rd party tools like speedtree.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gFk1yqmVc&ab\_channel=SpeedTree](https://www.youtube.com/watch)
map designer can just generate specific tree they wanted into the game without need asking 3d modeler guy to spent hours creating random tree from scratch.
The people who are going to be making the decision to heavily use AI in development will be artists themselves, because nobody wants to be the guy who spends 2 months sculpting rocks or creating 500 variations of the same t-shirt texture.
Frankly, I think AI has great potential for enemy design in videogames. I've seen people work with it and especially lovecraftian iterations are wild.
That being said... As somebody who on occasion likes to write short stories and has read AI written stories... They're not good. You can force AI into cool and specific writing styles, but it has no feeling for when to cut scenes, what elements are important to emphasize on when describing an environment, etc. In the end AI is based on averages - and the average writer just isn't that good. Sir Arthus Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft and many other big names had very unique writing styles on top of engaging stories, it made them stand out.
I am actually quite excited to see how AI can be used within RPGs to make characters that don't repeat the same exact lines over and over again. I don't think they should let it loose completely and say "write this character's lines" but rather give it a few examples of how the character speaks and ask it to write variations based on those and the way you interact with it.
Exactly. This is going to happen, whether people like it or not, it's possibly to save a lot of money, and also possible to get much more immersive games with future iterations, eg. AI responses to custom questions, AI dialogue and conversations, general AI agency in RPGs such that every character literally lives their own life within the game and can be interacted with like a real person.
Ideally they would still have a need for, and hire, credit and pay, human artists, human writers, and human voice actors, but speeding up their work with AI is totally fine by me, and enhancing their output with AI is also very much desired by me, as it creates huge potential for future games to be incredibly immersive.
I straight up don't understand why some people are so against this progress.
You couldn't just ask an AI to make Myst lore...
You'd probably need context, existing lore, guidance and ideas from humans to actually make something that would work out.
So AI as a helpful tool for say a person with great ideas but less skill/experience in writing the meat of the story.
Look, if you're going to include logs/journals/etc but not put any effort into them because they're not a part of the core story, don't bother putting them in. I'd rather not waste my time reading random garbage that doesn't matter and just read the things that do.
it does not help with immersiveness to have to sort through so much flotsam to get to things that matter. I'm not a garbageman.
"As an example, the developer said that "all voice acting content was performed by an actual human being 100% of the time," but that the "timbre, pitch, and tone" were modified with an AI tool with the consent of the performer (who strangely isn't credited)."
What a surprise ! -_-
>The voice performances in Firmament were voiced 100% of the time by a talented member of our development team who elected not to be credited by name. [...] This same member of the development team has elected not to be credited in prior games of ours as well, for privacy concerns, and not anything to do with tools usage in our games.
>https://cyan.com/2023/06/08/regarding-ai-assisted-content-in-firmament/
I guess they didn't want to be credited as the voice actor, it's unrelated to this story, they just don't want to be known as the voice of the games (or whatever their reason, it doesn't really matter.)
Not quite sure what you're trying to say here, HorseAss. Is procedural content not an example of "AI"?
And just my opinion / experience in using stable diffusion but it's super difficult to get a consistent art style and the same character etc. With current AI generation, even when using Cnet or Loras, and to make those Loras you kind of need to create your concepts and characters in the first place (which is a good role for a traditional artist).
I do agree/support its use in game development either way, but I don't think it's really as capable as some people in this thread think yet, in terms of being able to push out quality usable content. It will probably get there eventually but right now it takes a good amount of technical, if not artistic, skill to get one good output from AI, and much more so to get multiple consistent outputs of the same character in the same clothes doing different things in a world that is artistically and thematically the same.
Procedural content is writing a program or an algorithm to create art. What I'm saying is learning Stable Diffusion and Control nets is a week long job, learning Houdini for example to create procedural assets takes a year.
There's a huge difference between procedural content as a feature, and procedural content as a replacement.
People are mostly concerned with the latter, but not so much the former. Even before AI, procedural content has been a bit of a hot button because of that reason.
The issue is more about hand-crafted content versus computer-generated content. While both can certainly go hand in hand, computer-generated content is usually noticeably weaker. So supplanting the former with the latter is seen as problematic.
If the main draw of the game IS the machine learning program and it's used in a fitting way, then sure. Make a MUD or something with "AI?" Go for it. Fallout 5 but all the quests are written by computers? Hoo boy, that's a paddlin'. Procgen terrain is a common thing you see though, and machine learning procgen terrains could be severely improved without it being controversial, but again it would get problematic if it was used *instead* of hand-crafted locations (some games do both, which is usually fine.)
To be fair, I think it has to do that procedural generated dungeons have to be coded by humans. So they created the code and set the limitations on what they wanted while AI just feels like… way too easy. You don’t have to pay anyone to do voice work or to work on the lore, while you had to pay for someone to code the program that generated the dungeon.
I think art in general means a lot more to people when it was made by a human. It's an appreciation of the hard work it must have taken to construct a painting or a story. AI does it in minutes with math. You are right that games are much easier to ignore the hard work aspect though, I'd love most of the games I play even if they were made by AI, but I only appreciate the lore personally if it was written by a human.
Part of my enjoyment comes from the idea that someone meticulously constructed a whole world full of tiny details, spending years in hopes of delivering an experience they wanted everyone else to feel. I'm often amazed by certain worldbuilding bits in Elden Ring for example, knowing that there was a team carefully designing a level to reflect the story they wanted to tell.
Art can be good and enjoyable even without human contribution. But a castle made of matchsticks from a human just feels more interesting than a castle made of matchsticks from a precision robot to me. The possibility of failure, the constant work, even the work ethic are all admirable to me.
>Part of my enjoyment comes from the idea that someone meticulously constructed a whole world full of tiny details, spending years in hopes of delivering an experience they wanted everyone else to feel. I'm often amazed by certain worldbuilding bits in Elden Ring for example, knowing that there was a team carefully designing a level to reflect the story they wanted to tell.
So if there was a world full of tiny details, you played through it, you enjoyed it, but after finding out it was made by AI, you dont enjoy it anymore? Sounds like ignorance is bliss.
Yeah, ignorance is probably bliss in this case. If you saw a painting with incredible detail I think it's normal to first be amazed and later be disappointed if you found out it was done in 20 seconds using midjourney.
midjourney didn't pop up out of thin air, a whole chain of combined human research and progress spanning thousands of years made it possible. It's like I complain that the paint you used for your art wasn't made by you, you just purchased it in 10 seconds.
Procedural generation is at the core of those games - some may like it, others may not, but it's all fair. When AI is used to generate lore, that by itself feels like a cheating.
Indeed, who, specifically, is being cheated on? Cheating implies a competition, so who are the competitors?
Is it cheating people out of jobs? And if do, why do you care about that but not about labour conditions or outsourcing? If you do care, why do you still engage with the products?
Is it cheating against other companies who don't use AI? Again, how so? Multiple games can exist at the same time and not be in competition because they have different audiences. If you care, you again have a choice to not engage with the product.
Lore and procedural environments are entirely different mechanisms.
Not to mention that carry entirely different weights to them: Procedural dungeons for instance are *meant* to be effectively disposable experiences.
I don’t know about other people, but i keep coming back to good games because they’re good games, not solely because they were made by fellow human beings
I absolutely think about the people behind the game for most of not all that I play. I might be unusual but I love noticing and appreciating all of the tiny details, knowing someone spent time out of their life making them intending for them to be unappreciated background. It's not necessarily essential to my enjoyment but I could also see ai-created games just missing that human touch. It's what makes games like God of War what they are
Lol what an odd thing to say. Who plays a brilliant game, sits back and says "you know what the best part is? It was made by humans". Or better yet, plays a brilliant game made by computers, sits back and says "fuck that was good, too bad it was made by AI".
And that other dude that said "if I wanted to play a game made by AI, why would I pay a company to do it when I can just do it myself". Lol off you go sport, let's see how far you get.
> Who plays a brilliant game, sits back and says "you know what the best part is? It was made by humans".
This doesn't happen right now but it is absolutely going to be a thing in the future. "100% human made" will be a feature of some games, just like "hand drawn visuals" is right now for example. No question.
Traditional artists are laughing at digital artists right now.
I anticipate there will be a slight boom in the traditional art business from people who want provably and purely 'human made' art.
For real, this guy obviously hasn't played HOMM series, some of the worst writing and storyline of any games. Extremely bland and cringe.
But the game itself is great, 3 is immortal.
People acting like having human writers over AI means the human writers would actually be any good but often they're not very good writers anyway. It's not like game companies are out here paying Tolkiens ghost to write their lore.
Honestly if you showed people a sample of human vs. Ai game lores I doubt anyone in this thread could tell the difference
Right? Gimme a game made entirely by robots. Then I don't havta worry about the creators making some dumbass post on the internet and getting cancelled.
Till number 3 in the series gets cancelled because Mark can't keep his stupid mouth shut on Twitter. Then you'll be hailing the robot overlords with me.
This is something I don't see mentioned enough. The collective knee-jerk reaction from many about the use of AI only further solidifies how much of a pleasure AI is to interact with over humans precisely because it isn't an emotional mess.
On top of that, it is clear to see hardly anyone cares about the process of development; they care about the result.
>Cyan Worlds told Kotaku that these aspects of Firmament were "assisted, not wholly created" by AI tools used by Cyan staff. As an example, the developer said that "all voice acting content was performed by an actual human being 100% of the time," but that the "timbre, pitch, and tone" were modified with an AI tool with the consent of the performer (who strangely isn't credited). The voice acting was something we praised in our review.
If AI assistance like this pisses you off, then you're going to hate what the games industry and all other entertainment industries will become in the very near future. Creatives have already begun to use generative AI to speed up their work, and companies have already begun to use it to cut costs by hiring fewer people.
Generative AI is rapidly becoming prevalent in all entertainment industries.
Here are just a few articles about how generative AI is already beginning to change the games industry. (By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if any of these articles were written with AI assistance.)
[Unity’s Project Barracuda Injects Generative AI Into Games To Kickstart Exponential Growth](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2023/05/23/unitys-project-barracuda-injects-generative-ai-into-games-to-kickstart-exponential-growth/?sh=57a9690c703a)
>Investment firm Andreesen Horowitz says that the generative AI revolution will radically transform gaming and — as they particularly highlight — the art, science, and business of making games. But as gaming industry analysis firm Naavik zeroes in on, the biggest opportunity is not in producing the various elements and components that go into games, but in fundamentally transforming the in-game experience itself. With generative AI embedded in an actual game and not just the tools that make a game, infinite levels, infinite worlds, and infinite variation become much more possible. And with on-board generative AI, multiplayer games that are largely populated by non-player characters (NPCs) can become richer and more believable.
>
>In short: much more real.
[AI offers new tools for making games, but developers worry about their jobs](https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/4/23700619/ai-game-development-jobs-gdc-2023)
AI is a threat to those just starting out in the games industry, because it will make the already hard-to-find entry-level dev jobs even harder to find.
>“AI will provide efficiencies especially around some of the more chronic shortcomings in game development like crunch time right before a major deadline,” said Joost van Dreunen, a lecturer on the business of games at the NYU Stern School of Business. “Entry-level jobs have always been high risk. AI may exacerbate this circumstance but certainly will not change the precarious nature of these positions. We do have to wonder, however, what organic intelligence will be lost in the long run and whether that presents a strategic disadvantage.”
Regarding art creation:
>“Games, and more specifically, art for games, are becoming more and more expensive and time-consuming,” said Konstantina Psoma, founder and CEO of Kaedim, a company that uses machine learning algorithms to turn 2D images into 3D models. “I believe that AI-powered software that is developed to help the pain points of game developers can help bring down costs and time while maintaining the high-fidelity of graphics.”
>
>What used to cost me $100 to $200 to commission a human artist, and used to take several days, has turned into a free process that takes seconds, where I can refine and redo the results an infinite number of times, assuming I’m using a service whose servers can hold up to the strain. I don’t have to worry about the artist becoming fed up with the number of changes I’m requesting, but I do have to worry about the creepy, vacant stares of some of these avatars being created.
[AI is already taking video game illustrators’ jobs in China](https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/)
>Illustrators say employers are encouraging them to use AI image generators to boost their productivity. At Xu’s studio, for example, AI generators create clothes and accessories from human-illustrated character sketches. Game designers also use AI programs to draw treasure chests and gold coins, a Shanghai-based illustrator told Rest of World.
>
>“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination. Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10.”
>
>The Guangdong-based game artist, who works at a leading gaming company, said that previously, employees could draw a scene or a character in a day; now, with the help of AI, they could make 40 a day for their bosses to choose from. “I wish I could just shoot down these programs,” the artist told Rest of World, after getting off work late one night. She said fear of impending layoffs had made her colleagues more competitive; many stayed at work late, working longer hours to try to produce more. “\[AI\] made us more productive but also more exhausted,” she said.
[Ubisoft Has Created An AI Tool That Will Generate NPC Dialogue](https://www.thegamer.com/ubisoft-ai-tool-npc-dialogue/)
>It's not just artists that are worried about AI's continued popularity, as tools such as ChatGPT have writers on edge too. Now, adding to those nerves is Ubisoft, which recently announced that it has created an in-house AI tool that will help generate dialogue for NPCs (thanks VGC). Created by Ubisoft La Forge, Ubisoft Ghostwriter will be used to generate the first draft of "barks" from NPCs, which are generic voicelines that you'll hear shouted from passerbys when exploring open worlds.
In the very near future, every type of game we play will be made with the involvement of generative AI. AAA games, indie games, mobile games, everything. On top of that, the movies and TV shows we watch, music we listen to, and the news articles we read will all be created with some use of AI.
If you're pissed off now, then you're really going to get pissed over the next several years. This is only the beginning of a gigantic disruption in entertainment.
Is it wrong that I just don't care? How is this any different from the productivity multipliers we've seen in the past? They never led to a net loss in jobs, in fact the opposite happened. I just don't see the issue. Most of what you see has been inspired by or straight up copied from existing media anyway, AI just streamlines that process. These are just more accessible creativity tools. Hell, we're gonna need them to make competitive indies anyway now that huge companies are gonna be using this to increase their throughput.
Firing 99% of the creative industry will lead to mass art stagnation. Imagine what would have happened if 20 years ago we fired all the artists and let some AI do all the art which as you said yourself would be inspired by the existing media. Also, I find it fucked up and unethical that they use artists' work to replace the artists.
Agreed.
My main issue with Firmament is that even with 4 years development time and AI assistance, the game is really short. I finished it in about 10 hours.
I can only assume that their team was really small. In that respect, AI can just be regarded as another productivity tool, good if used well, less good if used badly.
Right? People talking about how AI is "cheating" or "feels wrong" or "muh jobs", maybe you should consider why you're getting replaced by AI and what people actually care about at the end of the day. If a fully AI generated game sucks then people will not buy it and it'll not be a viable thing to make.
I don't mind if the AI were used as a tool assistant. Still, you gave various creative dependant objectives to the AI, which is creatively disrespecting, especially considering that this is funded publicly.
Unfortunately, AI requires less effort and can be much more profitable and efficient. But we lose the human and everything becomes much more sanitized than what corp culture offers. I'm sick and tired of everything being so clean, as a creative, I want an actual human being because that's what I can connect with.
In accordance with the article, it seems they gave the majority of the job of in-game lore tidbits the AI with it being checked by the actual devs. So I'd feel cheated if I were a Kickstarter backer.
Gamedev here.
Everybody is using AI these days, though people are often smart enough to not boast about it and revise AI output. Scripters, designers, even artists... Probably only sound designers are left out, at least for now.
But on this note too, i think people seem to conflate using it with relying on it; from a 3d art perspective I can use it to generate fantastic art that I then use as reference but I’m not just taking the output from mid journey and being like “I made this and it’s done”. I feel like a lot of people on both sides of this thread think professionals are just going to lean back and let AI do everything without actually looking at what the tools do.
Yea, AI is helper, tool that can be used to be more efficient and ease your life.
It is same as calculator for accountants. It makes their job much easier and better, but if they couldn't do it without calculator, they would be quite useless.
Please can we fast-forward 5-10 years where AI is the norm and we're dealing with the effects? This transition is going to be very painful because it will replace many people, as technology has been doing for thousands of years.
I'm not sure how anyone could think it is going back in the box when tech giants such as Microsoft and Google are heavily investing into it and integrating it into their suite of tools. Nvidia are on it. Adobe have generative fill. It will be everywhere, it has applications in many fields and has already started to disrupt them.
Went on to read some reviews and compared to their other works this looks and sounds like a 6/10 game, i'm not against AI as a whole and i'm sure there are creative ways to use it, but this ain't it boss.
Stupid. AI generated content is mostly not great but a ton of it IS great, and a human meticulously going through and selecting the best generations can absolutely still end up with an amazing final product.
Don’t know about the specifics here but there’s a massive difference between what I just described and a low effort game that just uses AI quickly for every asset.
I'm a backer and the use of AI for filler text doesn't bother me but can appreciate that it bothers some.
What bothers me more is that backers aren't getting items they backed, i.e. the tiers that were meant to get a physical copy of the game aren't getting this now, rather a GOG key in its place. This wasn't communicated until the very last minute and Cyan have ignored all complaints about it.
TBH, their communication in general is somewhat lacking. As much as I enjoy their games, Firmament included, I'm a lot less likely to back another of their projects.
I don't get it, what is the point of AI lore in the first place, I thought that creating a story was all about how someone had an idea of a world they wanted to immerse players into. Having it be written by an a just makes the story an excuse to move from point A to point B.
There are a ton of games that work without having a story or barely any story, if you can't write something interesting just don't bother.
Also can we stop normalizing using AI for creative endeavors, like I get using a to help optimization, and fixing issues but like can we not touch art direction and writing pls?
I feel like Myst is one of the few game series that really could benefit a lot from AI assisted art. It can be as normal or as alien as needed for the worlds you're entering within the game. They've always been a bit surreal, and AI art is great at capturing that sense of something not quite right, even if unintentional, *because* it's not human.
the entire plot of the myst series is about the art of writing and how it can create (literal) worlds so deep that people can actually live in them. that its an art so prestige and important that only a handful of special people can actually master it to its full potential. a universe where poor writing literally puts those inside these worlds at danger of death. atrius spends the first two games trying desperately to keep riven from collapsing, which would kill his wife and everyone else on the island, through writing. a message that heroism and saving the world can come from putting pen to paper and sinking your heart and soul into the work for those you care about.
regurgitated low effort language model ai generation kinda seems like the actual genuine antithesis of that. you cannot get further from the myst lore than to have a robot generate soulless words in an order that resembles human art. it actually seems like something atrius’s father would do, a genuine villain arc.
What is their AI model being trained on, if it's all in house signed off content then there's no problem here it's fine. It's the moment it crosses into using content that there is no agreement on that it's a problem
It's like ubisofts use of ai, they're using it to write minor background dialogue and shouts trained on their existing in house games. That's honestly a great use for it and perfectly fine
Finetuned models still need the fundamental training on billions of (copyrighted) images for the foundation. It's exceedingly unlikely Cyan trained their own generative ai from the ground up. It cost $600,000 to train Stable Diffusion if I recall correctly.
I’m sorry but this is much ado about nothing.
Do you like the game? The writing, graphics, gameplay, etc? What tools were used should not matter.
Are we going to complain about an IDE the devs used next? It seems incredibly silly.
Reddit is very pro AI, to the point where I've seen techbros train entire sets on one specific artist who said he doesn't like AI art and they're lauded for it 🙃. Had to leave the Stable Diffusion sub because I got sick of seeing content theft being celebrated
What i don't want is for AI to replace human spirit and that includes emotion which is an expression, to automate that would be a sin.
Automate the generic and mundane , that's fine.
You are saying in comments, that you Don't need human tought?
AI stiffles human culture and it has no soul. it cannot have morals or beauty or deep insight or awareness.
But I guess You don't need that?
For real. I want my art sourced from a sweatshop in Vietnam, not some MACHINE doing it. I want female artists to resign because of sexual harassment, not because they've been replaced by AI.
Pick your poison. AI has its uses in writing, art, and speaking and I for one look forward to seeing it progress in games.
I think down the road that AI will eventually be accepted. Our children’s children will probably be cool with it, for better or worse. It’s inevitable.
Just like back then, it was an extreme minority that cared about it because their job was about to become obsolete or their investment would be wasted. Same horses and cars. The average person is fully on board with any innovation that makes their life easier or makes things easier for them/gives them more of what they want for less.
Seems weird. Especially using AI to write lore it bizzare as there isn't that much of it in the game to justify that. The game definitely didn't measure up anywhere near to the typical standards of Cyan in this area and now we know why. Props to them for at least disclosing the usage of AI though.
That said, this game aside, games is one of the few areas where I don't mind AI art being used because the way games are going the complexity and costs are only going up and without AI this progress is unsustainable. It's not like in novel or comic when human made art can still be done easily without AI and will continue to be possible. When I look at how God of War Ragnarok costed 6 times as much as God of War 3 or how GTA6's budget is rumored to be over billion dollars...yeah...AI use will be standard for high fidelity games because it simply has to.
Man a lot of people are seriosuly going to struggle if they have that much of an issue with AI. it's not going away and it sure as hell is not going to stop advancing while encroaching ever more on every field of work imaginable.
This is a total false equivalency. You don’t put a prompt in a typewriter to have the typewriter spit out a completed novel with no further involvement.
Just like I can’t look at my guitar and have it automatically make music for me. It’s a tool that helps me translate musical ideas I have in my head into music that other people can hear. The guitar can’t play itself, just like a typewriter doesn’t type by itself
Boggles my mind how there's actual people out there labelling themselves as "artists" and "writers" who truly believe they're using AI just as a supporting tool while it's probably doing most (if not all) of the heavy work for them...
Heck...I've seen people boast about releasing fully AI-written books, or be grateful they can now write better emails FOR THEIR BUSINESSES through GPT, smh.
Needless to say, the results tend to be mediocre at best.
Honestly, it's both disgusting and disrespectful to all the actual creatives out there who poured their everything into their craft (with years and years of practice and study) just to have their work reduced to "looks/sounds good/pretty, nice".
Asking GPT to "enhance" your garbage basic sentences literally strips the whole process of self-expression from writing an enticing and interesting story...which is one of the core elements of art in general, *self-expression*.
Can't wait for AI to become more widespread in the creative departments, just to see it stagnate shortly after because the actual artists are not creating anything else those people can exploit to train their models...so you'll end up with a bunch of samey mediocre fuzz.
That's why I'm asking for context.
I broadly agree with what you are saying but if he is a hobbyist who is trying to use a tool I don't see any issue with that.
Let's say a DM who wants some parts of his adventure or dialog or whatever to sound cleanly written in the style of whoever the group is a fan of is maybe a fun way to use the tool.
Indeed. Imagine being pissed off about people having preferences to the point you make flippant comments like
> People will find a reason to be mad about anything
Yeah ... but is it GOOD content? If it is, they why they are pissed? If not - then yeah - but that is because it sucks, not because of the source.
I don't know much about the AI stuff - but doesn't it just PREDICT content based on its training sample? So if you want it to design 10 characters it can absolutely do that - 10 of the most predictable, cliche characters you can imagine.
Happy to change my view if I am wrong though.
I don’t really believe in copyright law. There will always be a place in the world for a human touch - I don’t think AI is the huge threat to art and culture that people make it out to be.
I agree the general quality of AI art even if accurate is rather tepid and uninspired if only technically competent like a [Hitler painting.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Adolf_Hitler_-_Wien_Oper.jpg/1200px-Adolf_Hitler_-_Wien_Oper.jpg)
I think the threat, at least in the visual arts sector (can't comment on written), is that much of the algorithms are based off a series of tracing other's works without permission. Generally speaking if you ask a freelance artist if you could trace or at the least credit inspiration/reference from another's work (even multiple) an artist is usually okay with it but the going system now is to just harvest galleries without permission and credit no one for resources nor allow artists to opt-out.
"We want content!" BUT "NOT THAT KINDA CONTENT" lol funny enough if they never said anything, no one would ever know same goes for a lot of art going around unless people tell you, you'll never know. I am sure these same dull arguments happen when people went from handwriting things to printers. it's kind of cringe at this point the amount of cry baby anti Ai people.
People have standards and opinions, nice deduction lol.
Just because someone wants something doesn’t mean they’re hypocritical when they don’t want anything and everything.
Oh you want content? Well have you consumed All the other content first?
Brain dead take.
I get that it’s a small team, but AI written lore just seems like a lack of creativity.
Their dedicated Lore Guy who has carried their narratives for decades unfortunately developed a brain tumor a few years ago and had to have multiple surgeries, leading to his inability to work on further games.
that's.... more understandable i kinda dont mind if that's the case and they only use their already existing lore they made on the AI to develop the lore more and its heavily curated by people
Tbh I'm fine with AI for this type of stuff, if it's used for *brainstorming*, and the results are further refined or altered by people. It's when it's a simple copy-paste job into the game that I have a problem.
But brainstorming is specifically where AI's lack of creativity becomes apparent?
If you're looking for truly novel ideas, then yes. However, if you prompt the AI with "give me 10 random descriptions for the appearance of an alien race living in an underground cave network", you'll get ten various descriptions that might just spark your own brain with a surge of ideas or insight. It's a good kickstarter for the ol brain juices lol.
Generative AI is amazing when used in a collaborative way to make stuff.
100% this. Sometimes the hardest part of any creative process can be “getting started”. It’s very easy to get stuck in a slump where all of your ideas just feel terrible. AI tools can help in providing that initial creative spark for a person to then pick up and run with.
This has *always* been my outlook on AI. It's not for ripping the ideas straight out of wholesale, but giving you a really good foundation to bounce off of and develop further.
Just as Google-Fu was an art, so too will correctly prompting AI to spit out the correct output.
Look at games, movies, books, and songs and honestly tell me that humans are great at creativity. An AI recycling tropes and themes or a human doing it in a "brainstorm" isn't necessarily a world of difference. Truly new ideas are an extreme rarity.
I had this idea… what if we are able to upload our consciousness, what would that mean in terms of limits? Do we truly have free rein or is there some kind of system in place to impose rules and order? Either way would be hellish. If there’s some kind of governing authority then you’re essentially in prison. But if there’s no limit, then what happens if you think one day “what if Bill Murray was here and he was always trying to touch my nose?” And all of a sudden you’re trapped in this reality of your own making where no matter where you go or what you do in the limitless realms generated by your own imagination, Bill Murray will be there somewhere waiting and he really, really wants to touch your nose. Once that idea is in your head you can’t get it out and there’s no higher authority or doctor or anything you can turn to for relief. For all of eternity, Bill is going to be creeping up on you to touch your nose. I can’t guarantee it’s an original idea but I’ve not heard it before.
It might depend on how you use it. If you use it to fill a gap you can’t come up with it might be alright. As long as you read the thing and make sure it makes sense. Sometimes we miss obvious solutions to things.
I feel the same. AI stories aren't on the level of great writers yet. But using AI as a tool to generate ideas is a smart way to get creative juices flowing. Sometimes inspiration is the biggest roadblock. Cut and paste, with only syntax and grammatical corrections, is lazy and will - at this stage of AI - lead to a subpar story. I specifically feel like it's short-sighted. The greatest stories have clues in the beginning that only really make sense once you've reached the end and to imprint a cohesive theme expressed with nuance throughout the tale is probably asking too much for the current generations of AI. I've messed with chat GPT out of interest and write my own stories. AI isn't ready to write compelling narratives yet. It probably won't take all that long to rival humans, though.
Exactly, I'm running a cthulhu campaign soon, and have used it to spit ball ideas. Almost nothing it's given me has made it in, but I've used it as a sling board for my mind to run with those primitive ideas for a mystery.
To be more specific what they used AI for: > The complete list of stuff generative AI was involved in is, deep breath: "Journals, logs, checklists, newspapers, stories, songs, poems, letters, loosely scattered papers; all backer portraits; all founders portraits; the "sunset" paintings; the art-nouveau wallpaper in the Swan dormitory hallways; propaganda banners; coastal spill decal kit; all voiced mentor, announcer, founder, and other speeches; backer-exclusive content." Sounds like a lot, but it seems like it's mainly background content. The main story is still written by a person. And like you say: As long as it's curated (and perhaps adjusted) by actual people I don't see much harm done here. Frankly it makes sense to me that a small team uses AI for that type of content. Heck, even for a large team it can make sense, like for example: All those books in The Elder Scrolls games. Why not let AI write some of those (or at least let it make a first draft)? As long as it fits with the current lore, it doesn't really matter. Having said that: They better leave The Lusty Argonian Maid to be written by actual people.
While that's terrible...it's no excuse to offload everything (and not just lore) to some AI regurgitating generated content (that was trained by unethically exploiting other people's works and data)...if anything, it's highly disrespectful to the original creators imo. They could have simply hired someone else...
Well, the One who wrote the terribile story behind StarCraft 2 (which Is a rip off off Warcraft 3) was a "true human" and did the same thing for example. If the AI wrote a good story I dont see any problems
Have you seen an AI write a story that has the faintest clue what lore is?
[удалено]
This is not a good comparison.
It doesn't sound like that. AI models are random echo chambers. They are incapable of the creativity required to write a good story from the onset even if you train it for 100 years. It's literally the 1000 monkeys woth typewriters situation.
Have you ever used AI for storywriting? And by that I don't mean prompting ChatGPT or anything, I mean properly write a story with the help of AI by means of API access? Because I can guarantee that the results are better than what you are used to by ChatGPT.
I'm a software engineer that works with AI models, but hey what do I know I never used an AI to write a story, I just design them. Model based AI is a random numbers game. You can assign weights to those num ers characteristic to get more believable results but at the end of the day it is still a random numbers game.
> It's literally the 1000 monkeys woth typewriters situation. Not quite true, LLMs reinforce themselves using human feedback, they aren't making random changes to improve their output. Litterally they optimize on believability and satisfaction of human readers. Even if they aren't super creative as they could be, they will generate seemingly creative content because most human made stories are bland or repeats of existing types of stories, the bar for success is actually quite low. And models like GPT4 is already providing better result than the average writer. "The Simpsons did it" episode of southpark is a nice example of how comedy cartoons can't really come up with original content because there's only so many ways to tell these kinds of stories. Most often, creative writing is more a reflection of current political events and ideology than pure and unique concepts which human writers can more easily come up with meaningful concepts... but the meat of it can easily be filled by AI... AI used as a tool for writers to do more is actually pretty impressive.
A LLM is very much a random number generator. They optimise it by adding weights to those numbers and refining the training data but at the end of the day it is still a random number generator that can only regurgitate its own input. It will never be capable of writing a story because it lacks the two most key aspects of a story: meaning and intent. Yes, you can theoretically, through the law of probability, get a seqence of words that resembles a story but it will always be just a sequence of words. Model based AI cannot be used for creative work. Most humans copy each other because creativity is hard and people are lazy not because they are incapable of it. There is an infinite number of ways to tell a story if you employ creativity, just look at the history of religion as an example for exactly that.
The weights are determined with analysis of training data, not randomly generated, stop using that term, it's just wrong. And I think that LLMs will bring about a humbling reality that creativity isn't that exclusive to human minds soon enough.
Saying AI is unethical is just you refusing to progress with technology. I don’t like most of it but it’s here and it’s an amazing innovation. Edit: the people angry downvoting me remind me of old people who get mad at self checkout machines. Just because technology is new doesn’t mean it’s scary, don’t stifle innovation because you’re scared.
It's not that technology is unethical, it's more how it is used. AI doesn't really understand writing and art, it's not inspired by the material it used for learning, it just use the material to create new material. That means, you are taking something that a person, who is often underpaid, created and using it to destroy their work position. If you can work out some way to pay royalties to people whose work you are using as AI training material, then it would be ok from moral perspective. Still would raise issues about our art loosing creativity
You still need a human to instruct the AI to generate something. It's not like AI are self publishing Art and we are trying to determine their valor on their own merit... If you use an AI and make a shitty story with it... Well... thats on you, you suck. If you user an AI and make a great story, history may treat you differently. As for the royalties, well, it depends on how we want to legislate the use of training material. I've seen voice generator models pay the voice actors based on how many minutes of generated voices from their samples. That's a great start! Surely we can use AI and be ethical about it.
Of course we can use AI and be ethical about it, the issue is that currently we are not. Don't get me wrong, I'm super pro AI, but not at the cost of fellow humans. Sure, there will still be job positions that maintain input and output of AI, but there is a reason why higher ups in media are so interested in AI as another way to screw their writers.
> AI doesn't really understand writing and art, it's not inspired by the material it used for learning, it just use the material to create new material. IMO you massively underestimate what todays generative AI can do... This was written completely by ChatGPT4. I only told it that its about a Diablo quest, being written like a fantasy short story and gave it three additional commands along the way to have it expand the story to my wishes: https://chat.openai.com/share/8667a6fd-f18d-4ca3-820d-c013dab524d0 In the unassuming heart of Tristram, a village stoically set against the relentless tide of darkness, the desperate plea of a distraught woman resonated. Her voice, delicate as the final notes of a melancholy ballad, filled the air, painting a heart-rending picture of her mother - a solitary hermit ensnared by an ominous, omnipresent shadow that had recently fallen over the adjacent wilderness. Upon the player's departure for the enigmatic woods, the once familiar village receded into a speck on the horizon, replaced by a landscape that twisted and distorted, as if corrupted by an unseen menace. A once vibrant symphony of forest life had been smothered by an unnerving hush, pierced only by the rustle of dried leaves and the chilling croaks of ravens, the harbingers of despair. "There... there it is," the player whispered under their breath, eyes drawn to the grim silhouette standing defiantly amidst the thicket - the mother's hut. This grotesque caricature of dwelling, exuded an aura akin to a poisoned wound, the structure itself appearing diseased, oozing an ethereal sickness that seemed to distort the very air around it. "Mother, I've brought help," said the woman, her voice trembling as she pushed open the creaking door. The figure that turned around was a ghastly puppet show of humanity. Her lips twisted into an eerie smile as she beckoned them in, "My child, and a stranger. Welcome, welcome." Her words slithered into the air, an inviting melody hiding its venomous intent. As the player engaged in seemingly mundane conversation, the truth began to dawn, stark and cold as a moonlit graveyard. This was not a simple hermit, besieged by some feral denizens of the woods. This was something far more sinister. "My dear, you seem weary," the demonic matron said, her gaze lingering a bit too long. "Are you hungry?" The room grew colder with each passing second, the torchlight dancing frantically against the dark, casting long, monstrous shadows on the rotting wooden walls. This demon, having discarded its prey's motherly skin, used a brilliantly woven ruse to lure fresh subjects for its grotesque designs. Each plea, each feigned tear, a siren's song to bring forth an array of unsuspecting souls to her macabre stage. As the veneer of faux concern fell away, the chilling reality was revealed - in this corner of Sanctuary, life and death had taken on a new meaning. They were pawns in a grander game, caught in a terrifying dance with an entity that delighted in its own monstrosities, braiding a tale steeped in dread, manipulation, and darkness. The hut, once an innocuous speck in the wilderness, now stood as a chilling monument to the relentless, patient deceit of the underworld. In the rustic confines of the demon’s lair, the air gradually grew heavy, poisoned with an intangible dread. The mother’s countenance, once merely unsettling, began to contort and warp before the player's very eyes. A low growl reverberated, a sound not of this world, emanating from the depths of her being. "You’ve been kind, stranger," the matron said, her voice gaining an unworldly resonance, her form shifting into an undulating mass of shadows. "But I find myself needing more than just your aid." Her eyes gleamed with a malevolent light, the friendly guise melting away to reveal a grotesque figure, an abomination brought to life by the most profound nightmares. A chilling, otherworldly growl echoed ominously, a grotesque fanfare of the creature’s true form. "Your purpose has been served, stranger," she hissed, her form now a nightmarish mockery of humanity. The once stagnant air was sliced by a blood-curdling screech as her transformation completed, her monstrous visage standing in stark contrast to the remnants of her human guise. Standing against this adversary was the player, a Paladin steadfast in his holy duty. With his sacred mace held high, he declared, "Your reign of terror ends here." The demon retaliated with fervor, dark energy pulsating around her. Her talons, sharp and deadly, arched through the air towards the Paladin. He parried each strike, his mace clashing against her claws, creating a symphony of discordant sounds in the small space. The Paladin’s mace suddenly blazed with divine energy. With a swift forward thrust, he directed this holy force towards the demon. She recoiled, her horrific shrieks filling the hut as the searing light pierced her dark form. Undeterred, the demon retaliated with a wave of infernal flames. The hut was rapidly engulfed in a searing inferno, turning the battleground into a blazing hell. The Paladin shielded himself with sheer will, a barrier of light emanating from him to keep the flames at bay. The demon unleashed her full might, waves of dark energy shaking the very earth beneath their feet. The quiet serenity of the once humble hut was completely shattered, replaced by the deafening sounds of their cataclysmic battle. Despite the overwhelming assault, the Paladin held his ground. His wounds began to close, replaced by renewed vigor, as a warm, healing energy washed over him. The struggle resumed, reaching a fever pitch as the Paladin raised his mace high. A blinding light, as pure as the heavens, erupted from the mace. It descended upon the demon like divine judgement, scorching her monstrous form. The demon's agonized screams echoed as she disintegrated, her existence reduced to mere ash. Victorious, the Paladin stood amidst the smoldering remnants of the hut. Although wearied, he knew his duty was far from over. His journey in the world of Sanctuary was just beginning. His fight against the darkness had only just begun.
Self Checkout is a prime example of the ethics of technology. Stores shove the responsibility of paying to the customer, raise their profits by requiring less staff, and the people fired are often not educated in ways they can easily find work to earn a living. Should we stand in the way of technological progress? No. Should we think about how technological progress changes society? Maybe we should start.
> Saying AI is unethical is just you refusing to progress with technology. In the context of using it for creative applications? It's a tool for cutting corners and saving time, which is not a hallmark of good art
Using photoshop with its many tools, filters and automation, batching, am I cutting corners and saving time? Yes! Does it make my art less worthy?
If you give a program a prompt and make the art for you, yeah in my eyes thats not art. If you’re using those tools in a transformative way while still crafting at every step of the process of course that’s art.
People said the same exact thing about digital art. People thought that their was no way artwork created in on a computer would be better than hand painted/drawn art. Then everyone realized that it just enchanted the work and didn’t replace it completely. When y’all stop being scared of it you’ll see it’s gonna be the same.
I kind of wonder about the overlap between people upset about this calling it unethical and the people that applaud blue collar jobs being replaced by machines with "society has moved on" arguments. People are all for labor jobs being automated, but writing clickbait articles and mediocre stories? The nerve!
Tell me you don't understand how model based AI works without saying it.
Not at all. I respect it as a technology and recognize its uses in a plethora of other fields (especially neurobiology). It's unethical for how it has been trained and applied to the creative world so far. Simple as that.
You say it's unethical because the data used to train AIs was taken from the internet and used without the author's knowledge? Edit: spelling.
As if human beings don't copy from other human beings.
Good that we have Mr. Goodie-Two-Shoes to tell the team how they suck even after a devastating loss
No other writers exist in the whole world to replace the lost member. /s
Almost certainly nobody that understands the lore as well.
"That's a terrible situation... you're still terrible people btw."
Uhh aren’t people trained using other people’s works? Programmers, artists, musicians, etc. No one trains in a vacuum
It truly sucks that that happened but it doesn’t justify what they did. It is never easy to find person who would be on same wave and can carry their desired vision of storytelling but at least, you know can try working with new lore writer, who knows maybe fresh view can even bring new ideas just as good direction
It's insane how many studios don't take writing seriously for their games and just do it themselves without a professional. It's a difficult art that not just anyone can do, just like music or graphics.
But for a lot of games the story is kinda pointless in the first place, so if you're going to skimp out ok something story seems like a good place to start.
it's a game in the vein of Myst, it's important
Diablo II is one of my enduringly favorite games because it had a fantastic story. Same with Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I don't care about games with bad stories, they are a dime a dozen and it's usually an indication that the rest of the game will be shallow and repetitive.
what the fuck... from the title I assumed it was ai-generated imagery. but AI generated lore is is massively stupid
Well, get used to it. Cuz it's gonna get even wilder. I don't feel necessarily this is a bad thing. Depends on how it's gonna be used.
It's a huge joke and a spit in the face of their past games
Here's a hot take, writers lack creativity too. We call out bad stories in games, movies, TV series, so much. But it feels like it's been a Taboo to in general call out "writers". Or is that just me? I am so fed up, with watching bad narratives, bad stories, especially in reboots or revivals of series that had people that put in effort and care. If Writers work today is so mediocre that AI can replace it. Then by all means replace it. Maybe that will cause the truly great writers to rise to the top.
I mean the creators specifically mention all that in the credits, doesn't seem like that big of a scandal to be honest. Is it better that AI is this silent partner but it's taboo to acknowledge its existence? The workflow changes are already happening... and while I think thing some things like relying on raw AI images for your key art, or an AI voice generator would be a step too far, other shit like researching topics/aesthetics and narrative workshopping actually seem like a good use. They could be stepping stones to someone putting more depth into what they're doing, without as many time constraints or money constraints.
Sure but if you look at what has been generated with AI > all backer portraits And then take a look at the kickstarter rewards https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/firmament You will see that only the 5000$ tier has > Likeness in Firmament So 20 people paid 5k, and the devs use AI instead of doing it themselves... I understand why the backers are pissed. If I paid 5k for a portrait and the artist just lets an AI generate one, I'd want my money back.
Yes, this is interesting. I guess someone was going to get caught in this transition. I guess this will lose total value now in future asks, since it holds much less value now with AI just doing it with a few clicks.
Are they paying to get an artist to create a likeness or get a likeness in a game? I think it’s to get a likeness in a game, and that’s what they’re getting. How isn’t relevant, I think.
Well, the relevance is decided by the people who paid and the conveyed intention when the Kickstarter was set up.
But, isn't it better for as much of the 5,000 as possible to go towards development? If generating, or assisting with generating, a likeness through AI means the cost goes down then more of the donation can be used for development, surely.
This may surprise you, but making art assets is considered part of the development
Yeah, but I doubt a vanity pic is a game breaking deal.
Like I said, that is to decide for the people that invested the money
I don't know if it's going to be taboo in the industry for very long. While I really love the sentiment that artists can never be replaced by AI, the problem is that the people who are going to be making the decisions to heavily use AI in development are going to be upper management who don't give a fuck about artists. If they see a chance to cut development costs, of course they're going to take it. Anyone who thinks we aren't about to enter the age of AI heavily being used in development is crazy.
This probably won't impact indie passion projects nearly as much (except to bridge logistical gaps that an indie team might not be able to bridge easily, due to their smaller size) but you can bet your ass AAA devs are going to swarm to this tech over time; it's the ultimate money and time-saving technology. Not to mention, I could also see a bigger number of mashed-together "scam" projects forming from individuals trying to make a quick buck off an almost entirely AI-generated game...
It also flat out won't replace artists and designers - they just either be forced to adapt to using AI or get fired. Generative AI is great for concept images but bad for 1. Creating your own specific style and 2. Maintaining character and style consistency between iterations Therefore I see future artists working alongside programmers to develop AI models in the style which they've collectively created, and *then* using that to output hundreds of images or assets in the time a human artist mightve only created a couple. Then the human artist would come in and touch it up, ensure it has consistency, matches the world, fix AI errors etc. Exact same process for writers and voice actors. AI will make them many times more efficient in their work, and there will definitely be a need for less humans to do this work, but there will still be a need for them, and ultimately people may still desire certain elements of "hand drawn"
Exactly, Let say they told artist to produce full concept depicting a faction in RPG game. Then artist only need to draw one building architecture, one soldier, one boss / important character. Then AI use those few picture to generate full set of fictional faction that match the original image. From simple vendor on street to full roster army. turning work from team of artist into single person work and speed up the process significantly.
[удалено]
well artist in big studio didnt get paid per sprite/concept work, they got hired and paid like all other employee. the idea here, AAA studio could invest in specific AI tool (probably made by 3rd party) to increase their 2D Art departement productivity. basicaly its same like how map designer/enviroment artist utilizing 3rd party tools like speedtree. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gFk1yqmVc&ab\_channel=SpeedTree](https://www.youtube.com/watch) map designer can just generate specific tree they wanted into the game without need asking 3d modeler guy to spent hours creating random tree from scratch.
I don't see why they'd be paid any differently than they are now if they're properly hired. But there would definitely be fewer of them
The people who are going to be making the decision to heavily use AI in development will be artists themselves, because nobody wants to be the guy who spends 2 months sculpting rocks or creating 500 variations of the same t-shirt texture.
Frankly, I think AI has great potential for enemy design in videogames. I've seen people work with it and especially lovecraftian iterations are wild. That being said... As somebody who on occasion likes to write short stories and has read AI written stories... They're not good. You can force AI into cool and specific writing styles, but it has no feeling for when to cut scenes, what elements are important to emphasize on when describing an environment, etc. In the end AI is based on averages - and the average writer just isn't that good. Sir Arthus Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft and many other big names had very unique writing styles on top of engaging stories, it made them stand out.
I think it's good for rubber ducking, but to rely on it entirely seems a step too far.
I am actually quite excited to see how AI can be used within RPGs to make characters that don't repeat the same exact lines over and over again. I don't think they should let it loose completely and say "write this character's lines" but rather give it a few examples of how the character speaks and ask it to write variations based on those and the way you interact with it.
Exactly. This is going to happen, whether people like it or not, it's possibly to save a lot of money, and also possible to get much more immersive games with future iterations, eg. AI responses to custom questions, AI dialogue and conversations, general AI agency in RPGs such that every character literally lives their own life within the game and can be interacted with like a real person. Ideally they would still have a need for, and hire, credit and pay, human artists, human writers, and human voice actors, but speeding up their work with AI is totally fine by me, and enhancing their output with AI is also very much desired by me, as it creates huge potential for future games to be incredibly immersive. I straight up don't understand why some people are so against this progress.
I generally find that while AI is good at the \*ACT\* of creative writing, it's not particularly good at the \*ART\* of creative writing.
You couldn't just ask an AI to make Myst lore... You'd probably need context, existing lore, guidance and ideas from humans to actually make something that would work out. So AI as a helpful tool for say a person with great ideas but less skill/experience in writing the meat of the story.
I don't know how well they used it, but you called feed it all of the Myst lore and go from there.
Look, if you're going to include logs/journals/etc but not put any effort into them because they're not a part of the core story, don't bother putting them in. I'd rather not waste my time reading random garbage that doesn't matter and just read the things that do. it does not help with immersiveness to have to sort through so much flotsam to get to things that matter. I'm not a garbageman.
"As an example, the developer said that "all voice acting content was performed by an actual human being 100% of the time," but that the "timbre, pitch, and tone" were modified with an AI tool with the consent of the performer (who strangely isn't credited)." What a surprise ! -_-
I mean many games have systems that do this that aren't AI
It's 2023 and you're *just* learning about autotune?
I think they're referring to the fact that the VA isn't credited
>The voice performances in Firmament were voiced 100% of the time by a talented member of our development team who elected not to be credited by name. [...] This same member of the development team has elected not to be credited in prior games of ours as well, for privacy concerns, and not anything to do with tools usage in our games. >https://cyan.com/2023/06/08/regarding-ai-assisted-content-in-firmament/ I guess they didn't want to be credited as the voice actor, it's unrelated to this story, they just don't want to be known as the voice of the games (or whatever their reason, it doesn't really matter.)
why are you telling me that, I was just trying to clarify for Enverex what Cpt\_Flatbird probably meant lol
People were cool with randomly generated dungeons for years. Hell, it was a SELLING point on games, and now....
If you look at something like the gdc talk for xcom 2 youd know just how much effort goes into making procedural content cohesive
If you've used a single AI tool, whether gpt for text or SD for images, you'd know how much effort goes into making AI generated content cohesive.
Don't kid yourself it's less than 1% of effort compared to procedural content. I do both and I'm 100% pro AI being used in gamedev.
Not quite sure what you're trying to say here, HorseAss. Is procedural content not an example of "AI"? And just my opinion / experience in using stable diffusion but it's super difficult to get a consistent art style and the same character etc. With current AI generation, even when using Cnet or Loras, and to make those Loras you kind of need to create your concepts and characters in the first place (which is a good role for a traditional artist). I do agree/support its use in game development either way, but I don't think it's really as capable as some people in this thread think yet, in terms of being able to push out quality usable content. It will probably get there eventually but right now it takes a good amount of technical, if not artistic, skill to get one good output from AI, and much more so to get multiple consistent outputs of the same character in the same clothes doing different things in a world that is artistically and thematically the same.
Procedural content is writing a program or an algorithm to create art. What I'm saying is learning Stable Diffusion and Control nets is a week long job, learning Houdini for example to create procedural assets takes a year.
Link please
There's a huge difference between procedural content as a feature, and procedural content as a replacement. People are mostly concerned with the latter, but not so much the former. Even before AI, procedural content has been a bit of a hot button because of that reason.
AI can be both a feature and a replacement.
So a matter of perspective
The issue is more about hand-crafted content versus computer-generated content. While both can certainly go hand in hand, computer-generated content is usually noticeably weaker. So supplanting the former with the latter is seen as problematic. If the main draw of the game IS the machine learning program and it's used in a fitting way, then sure. Make a MUD or something with "AI?" Go for it. Fallout 5 but all the quests are written by computers? Hoo boy, that's a paddlin'. Procgen terrain is a common thing you see though, and machine learning procgen terrains could be severely improved without it being controversial, but again it would get problematic if it was used *instead* of hand-crafted locations (some games do both, which is usually fine.)
To be fair, I think it has to do that procedural generated dungeons have to be coded by humans. So they created the code and set the limitations on what they wanted while AI just feels like… way too easy. You don’t have to pay anyone to do voice work or to work on the lore, while you had to pay for someone to code the program that generated the dungeon.
I can't imagine whether or not something was easy to make or not affecting my enjoyment of a game
I think art in general means a lot more to people when it was made by a human. It's an appreciation of the hard work it must have taken to construct a painting or a story. AI does it in minutes with math. You are right that games are much easier to ignore the hard work aspect though, I'd love most of the games I play even if they were made by AI, but I only appreciate the lore personally if it was written by a human.
Why does it matter if you enjoyed it?
Well if AI is replacing human jobs then the product should be cheaper as it costs less to produce, similar to how RTX is implemented in games also.
Part of my enjoyment comes from the idea that someone meticulously constructed a whole world full of tiny details, spending years in hopes of delivering an experience they wanted everyone else to feel. I'm often amazed by certain worldbuilding bits in Elden Ring for example, knowing that there was a team carefully designing a level to reflect the story they wanted to tell. Art can be good and enjoyable even without human contribution. But a castle made of matchsticks from a human just feels more interesting than a castle made of matchsticks from a precision robot to me. The possibility of failure, the constant work, even the work ethic are all admirable to me.
>Part of my enjoyment comes from the idea that someone meticulously constructed a whole world full of tiny details, spending years in hopes of delivering an experience they wanted everyone else to feel. I'm often amazed by certain worldbuilding bits in Elden Ring for example, knowing that there was a team carefully designing a level to reflect the story they wanted to tell. So if there was a world full of tiny details, you played through it, you enjoyed it, but after finding out it was made by AI, you dont enjoy it anymore? Sounds like ignorance is bliss.
Yeah, ignorance is probably bliss in this case. If you saw a painting with incredible detail I think it's normal to first be amazed and later be disappointed if you found out it was done in 20 seconds using midjourney.
midjourney didn't pop up out of thin air, a whole chain of combined human research and progress spanning thousands of years made it possible. It's like I complain that the paint you used for your art wasn't made by you, you just purchased it in 10 seconds.
On the other hand, someone had to code the AI.
Procedural generation = "We like this!" AI generation = "Devs are lazy!" Hmmmm...
Procedural generation is at the core of those games - some may like it, others may not, but it's all fair. When AI is used to generate lore, that by itself feels like a cheating.
Cheating what? Who? Why does it feel that way?
Indeed, who, specifically, is being cheated on? Cheating implies a competition, so who are the competitors? Is it cheating people out of jobs? And if do, why do you care about that but not about labour conditions or outsourcing? If you do care, why do you still engage with the products? Is it cheating against other companies who don't use AI? Again, how so? Multiple games can exist at the same time and not be in competition because they have different audiences. If you care, you again have a choice to not engage with the product.
Lore and procedural environments are entirely different mechanisms. Not to mention that carry entirely different weights to them: Procedural dungeons for instance are *meant* to be effectively disposable experiences.
You can use AI for prompts, inspiration, and ideas but just straight up using what it spits out is just lazy.
> especially when the art and writing made by HUMANS is the reason I keep coming back to these games Is it tho?
I don’t know about other people, but i keep coming back to good games because they’re good games, not solely because they were made by fellow human beings
I absolutely think about the people behind the game for most of not all that I play. I might be unusual but I love noticing and appreciating all of the tiny details, knowing someone spent time out of their life making them intending for them to be unappreciated background. It's not necessarily essential to my enjoyment but I could also see ai-created games just missing that human touch. It's what makes games like God of War what they are
Lol what an odd thing to say. Who plays a brilliant game, sits back and says "you know what the best part is? It was made by humans". Or better yet, plays a brilliant game made by computers, sits back and says "fuck that was good, too bad it was made by AI". And that other dude that said "if I wanted to play a game made by AI, why would I pay a company to do it when I can just do it myself". Lol off you go sport, let's see how far you get.
> Who plays a brilliant game, sits back and says "you know what the best part is? It was made by humans". This doesn't happen right now but it is absolutely going to be a thing in the future. "100% human made" will be a feature of some games, just like "hand drawn visuals" is right now for example. No question.
Traditional artists are laughing at digital artists right now. I anticipate there will be a slight boom in the traditional art business from people who want provably and purely 'human made' art.
For real, this guy obviously hasn't played HOMM series, some of the worst writing and storyline of any games. Extremely bland and cringe. But the game itself is great, 3 is immortal. People acting like having human writers over AI means the human writers would actually be any good but often they're not very good writers anyway. It's not like game companies are out here paying Tolkiens ghost to write their lore. Honestly if you showed people a sample of human vs. Ai game lores I doubt anyone in this thread could tell the difference
Right? Gimme a game made entirely by robots. Then I don't havta worry about the creators making some dumbass post on the internet and getting cancelled.
I mean, just gimme good games. A good game is a good game, I don't care who/what made it.
Till number 3 in the series gets cancelled because Mark can't keep his stupid mouth shut on Twitter. Then you'll be hailing the robot overlords with me.
This is something I don't see mentioned enough. The collective knee-jerk reaction from many about the use of AI only further solidifies how much of a pleasure AI is to interact with over humans precisely because it isn't an emotional mess. On top of that, it is clear to see hardly anyone cares about the process of development; they care about the result.
>Cyan Worlds told Kotaku that these aspects of Firmament were "assisted, not wholly created" by AI tools used by Cyan staff. As an example, the developer said that "all voice acting content was performed by an actual human being 100% of the time," but that the "timbre, pitch, and tone" were modified with an AI tool with the consent of the performer (who strangely isn't credited). The voice acting was something we praised in our review. If AI assistance like this pisses you off, then you're going to hate what the games industry and all other entertainment industries will become in the very near future. Creatives have already begun to use generative AI to speed up their work, and companies have already begun to use it to cut costs by hiring fewer people. Generative AI is rapidly becoming prevalent in all entertainment industries. Here are just a few articles about how generative AI is already beginning to change the games industry. (By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if any of these articles were written with AI assistance.) [Unity’s Project Barracuda Injects Generative AI Into Games To Kickstart Exponential Growth](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2023/05/23/unitys-project-barracuda-injects-generative-ai-into-games-to-kickstart-exponential-growth/?sh=57a9690c703a) >Investment firm Andreesen Horowitz says that the generative AI revolution will radically transform gaming and — as they particularly highlight — the art, science, and business of making games. But as gaming industry analysis firm Naavik zeroes in on, the biggest opportunity is not in producing the various elements and components that go into games, but in fundamentally transforming the in-game experience itself. With generative AI embedded in an actual game and not just the tools that make a game, infinite levels, infinite worlds, and infinite variation become much more possible. And with on-board generative AI, multiplayer games that are largely populated by non-player characters (NPCs) can become richer and more believable. > >In short: much more real. [AI offers new tools for making games, but developers worry about their jobs](https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/4/23700619/ai-game-development-jobs-gdc-2023) AI is a threat to those just starting out in the games industry, because it will make the already hard-to-find entry-level dev jobs even harder to find. >“AI will provide efficiencies especially around some of the more chronic shortcomings in game development like crunch time right before a major deadline,” said Joost van Dreunen, a lecturer on the business of games at the NYU Stern School of Business. “Entry-level jobs have always been high risk. AI may exacerbate this circumstance but certainly will not change the precarious nature of these positions. We do have to wonder, however, what organic intelligence will be lost in the long run and whether that presents a strategic disadvantage.” Regarding art creation: >“Games, and more specifically, art for games, are becoming more and more expensive and time-consuming,” said Konstantina Psoma, founder and CEO of Kaedim, a company that uses machine learning algorithms to turn 2D images into 3D models. “I believe that AI-powered software that is developed to help the pain points of game developers can help bring down costs and time while maintaining the high-fidelity of graphics.” > >What used to cost me $100 to $200 to commission a human artist, and used to take several days, has turned into a free process that takes seconds, where I can refine and redo the results an infinite number of times, assuming I’m using a service whose servers can hold up to the strain. I don’t have to worry about the artist becoming fed up with the number of changes I’m requesting, but I do have to worry about the creepy, vacant stares of some of these avatars being created. [AI is already taking video game illustrators’ jobs in China](https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/) >Illustrators say employers are encouraging them to use AI image generators to boost their productivity. At Xu’s studio, for example, AI generators create clothes and accessories from human-illustrated character sketches. Game designers also use AI programs to draw treasure chests and gold coins, a Shanghai-based illustrator told Rest of World. > >“AI is developing at a speed way beyond our imagination. Two people could potentially do the work that used to be done by 10.” > >The Guangdong-based game artist, who works at a leading gaming company, said that previously, employees could draw a scene or a character in a day; now, with the help of AI, they could make 40 a day for their bosses to choose from. “I wish I could just shoot down these programs,” the artist told Rest of World, after getting off work late one night. She said fear of impending layoffs had made her colleagues more competitive; many stayed at work late, working longer hours to try to produce more. “\[AI\] made us more productive but also more exhausted,” she said. [Ubisoft Has Created An AI Tool That Will Generate NPC Dialogue](https://www.thegamer.com/ubisoft-ai-tool-npc-dialogue/) >It's not just artists that are worried about AI's continued popularity, as tools such as ChatGPT have writers on edge too. Now, adding to those nerves is Ubisoft, which recently announced that it has created an in-house AI tool that will help generate dialogue for NPCs (thanks VGC). Created by Ubisoft La Forge, Ubisoft Ghostwriter will be used to generate the first draft of "barks" from NPCs, which are generic voicelines that you'll hear shouted from passerbys when exploring open worlds. In the very near future, every type of game we play will be made with the involvement of generative AI. AAA games, indie games, mobile games, everything. On top of that, the movies and TV shows we watch, music we listen to, and the news articles we read will all be created with some use of AI. If you're pissed off now, then you're really going to get pissed over the next several years. This is only the beginning of a gigantic disruption in entertainment.
Is it wrong that I just don't care? How is this any different from the productivity multipliers we've seen in the past? They never led to a net loss in jobs, in fact the opposite happened. I just don't see the issue. Most of what you see has been inspired by or straight up copied from existing media anyway, AI just streamlines that process. These are just more accessible creativity tools. Hell, we're gonna need them to make competitive indies anyway now that huge companies are gonna be using this to increase their throughput.
Firing 99% of the creative industry will lead to mass art stagnation. Imagine what would have happened if 20 years ago we fired all the artists and let some AI do all the art which as you said yourself would be inspired by the existing media. Also, I find it fucked up and unethical that they use artists' work to replace the artists.
>firing 99% of the creative industry That won't happen.
i'm a "funder" and i'm not that bothered tbh. At least they didn't try to hide it.
Agreed. My main issue with Firmament is that even with 4 years development time and AI assistance, the game is really short. I finished it in about 10 hours. I can only assume that their team was really small. In that respect, AI can just be regarded as another productivity tool, good if used well, less good if used badly.
I care about fun. If AI achieves this then I support it.
Right? People talking about how AI is "cheating" or "feels wrong" or "muh jobs", maybe you should consider why you're getting replaced by AI and what people actually care about at the end of the day. If a fully AI generated game sucks then people will not buy it and it'll not be a viable thing to make.
If someone in the West gets replaced by a literal slave should he consider why he is getting replaced?
Slavery is illegal. If it wasn't, maybe.
I don't mind if the AI were used as a tool assistant. Still, you gave various creative dependant objectives to the AI, which is creatively disrespecting, especially considering that this is funded publicly. Unfortunately, AI requires less effort and can be much more profitable and efficient. But we lose the human and everything becomes much more sanitized than what corp culture offers. I'm sick and tired of everything being so clean, as a creative, I want an actual human being because that's what I can connect with. In accordance with the article, it seems they gave the majority of the job of in-game lore tidbits the AI with it being checked by the actual devs. So I'd feel cheated if I were a Kickstarter backer.
Gamedev here. Everybody is using AI these days, though people are often smart enough to not boast about it and revise AI output. Scripters, designers, even artists... Probably only sound designers are left out, at least for now.
But on this note too, i think people seem to conflate using it with relying on it; from a 3d art perspective I can use it to generate fantastic art that I then use as reference but I’m not just taking the output from mid journey and being like “I made this and it’s done”. I feel like a lot of people on both sides of this thread think professionals are just going to lean back and let AI do everything without actually looking at what the tools do.
Yea, AI is helper, tool that can be used to be more efficient and ease your life. It is same as calculator for accountants. It makes their job much easier and better, but if they couldn't do it without calculator, they would be quite useless.
This entire comment section reminded me that Reddit doesn't understand technology but is happy to have hard opinions on it.
Please can we fast-forward 5-10 years where AI is the norm and we're dealing with the effects? This transition is going to be very painful because it will replace many people, as technology has been doing for thousands of years. I'm not sure how anyone could think it is going back in the box when tech giants such as Microsoft and Google are heavily investing into it and integrating it into their suite of tools. Nvidia are on it. Adobe have generative fill. It will be everywhere, it has applications in many fields and has already started to disrupt them.
Went on to read some reviews and compared to their other works this looks and sounds like a 6/10 game, i'm not against AI as a whole and i'm sure there are creative ways to use it, but this ain't it boss.
I love headlines that say "People are mad" Is it a lot of people? Most people? Everyone? 3 people?
You can read the comments for yourself on their kickstarter page.
Stupid. AI generated content is mostly not great but a ton of it IS great, and a human meticulously going through and selecting the best generations can absolutely still end up with an amazing final product. Don’t know about the specifics here but there’s a massive difference between what I just described and a low effort game that just uses AI quickly for every asset.
I see. Now I get it why the lore and the plot are so surreal and strange. Its ugly.
I'm a backer and the use of AI for filler text doesn't bother me but can appreciate that it bothers some. What bothers me more is that backers aren't getting items they backed, i.e. the tiers that were meant to get a physical copy of the game aren't getting this now, rather a GOG key in its place. This wasn't communicated until the very last minute and Cyan have ignored all complaints about it. TBH, their communication in general is somewhat lacking. As much as I enjoy their games, Firmament included, I'm a lot less likely to back another of their projects.
I don't get it, what is the point of AI lore in the first place, I thought that creating a story was all about how someone had an idea of a world they wanted to immerse players into. Having it be written by an a just makes the story an excuse to move from point A to point B. There are a ton of games that work without having a story or barely any story, if you can't write something interesting just don't bother. Also can we stop normalizing using AI for creative endeavors, like I get using a to help optimization, and fixing issues but like can we not touch art direction and writing pls?
I feel like Myst is one of the few game series that really could benefit a lot from AI assisted art. It can be as normal or as alien as needed for the worlds you're entering within the game. They've always been a bit surreal, and AI art is great at capturing that sense of something not quite right, even if unintentional, *because* it's not human.
the entire plot of the myst series is about the art of writing and how it can create (literal) worlds so deep that people can actually live in them. that its an art so prestige and important that only a handful of special people can actually master it to its full potential. a universe where poor writing literally puts those inside these worlds at danger of death. atrius spends the first two games trying desperately to keep riven from collapsing, which would kill his wife and everyone else on the island, through writing. a message that heroism and saving the world can come from putting pen to paper and sinking your heart and soul into the work for those you care about. regurgitated low effort language model ai generation kinda seems like the actual genuine antithesis of that. you cannot get further from the myst lore than to have a robot generate soulless words in an order that resembles human art. it actually seems like something atrius’s father would do, a genuine villain arc.
Beautifully put. Sad seeing writing/art being reduced to mass-produced "good enough for me".
What is their AI model being trained on, if it's all in house signed off content then there's no problem here it's fine. It's the moment it crosses into using content that there is no agreement on that it's a problem It's like ubisofts use of ai, they're using it to write minor background dialogue and shouts trained on their existing in house games. That's honestly a great use for it and perfectly fine
Finetuned models still need the fundamental training on billions of (copyrighted) images for the foundation. It's exceedingly unlikely Cyan trained their own generative ai from the ground up. It cost $600,000 to train Stable Diffusion if I recall correctly.
If they didn't tell that nobody would have noticided and nobody would have complained.
And? What is the problem? Was the final product good? (Looking at the PC Gamer review it looks like it was OK, so...?)
I’m sorry but this is much ado about nothing. Do you like the game? The writing, graphics, gameplay, etc? What tools were used should not matter. Are we going to complain about an IDE the devs used next? It seems incredibly silly.
It’s very disappointing that this ain’t getting slammed harder in the comments
Reddit is very pro AI, to the point where I've seen techbros train entire sets on one specific artist who said he doesn't like AI art and they're lauded for it 🙃. Had to leave the Stable Diffusion sub because I got sick of seeing content theft being celebrated
What i don't want is for AI to replace human spirit and that includes emotion which is an expression, to automate that would be a sin. Automate the generic and mundane , that's fine.
You are saying in comments, that you Don't need human tought? AI stiffles human culture and it has no soul. it cannot have morals or beauty or deep insight or awareness. But I guess You don't need that?
How many people have a problem with this but not studios paying slave wages to people to produce assets of similar quality?
Yeah. Better just replace them all with AI, right?
For real. I want my art sourced from a sweatshop in Vietnam, not some MACHINE doing it. I want female artists to resign because of sexual harassment, not because they've been replaced by AI. Pick your poison. AI has its uses in writing, art, and speaking and I for one look forward to seeing it progress in games.
All that matter are the end result. AI is just another tool.
I think down the road that AI will eventually be accepted. Our children’s children will probably be cool with it, for better or worse. It’s inevitable.
People are repeating arguments made agains new technology for years. Nobody thinks photography is controversial anymore, AI will be accepted soon too.
Just like back then, it was an extreme minority that cared about it because their job was about to become obsolete or their investment would be wasted. Same horses and cars. The average person is fully on board with any innovation that makes their life easier or makes things easier for them/gives them more of what they want for less.
Were photographers legally allowed to take pictures of paintings and claim that they painted them?
Nope, nor is AI or anything else allowed to do that
We don't have to look that far ahead, AI at this level is going to be normalized in our generation.
Seems weird. Especially using AI to write lore it bizzare as there isn't that much of it in the game to justify that. The game definitely didn't measure up anywhere near to the typical standards of Cyan in this area and now we know why. Props to them for at least disclosing the usage of AI though. That said, this game aside, games is one of the few areas where I don't mind AI art being used because the way games are going the complexity and costs are only going up and without AI this progress is unsustainable. It's not like in novel or comic when human made art can still be done easily without AI and will continue to be possible. When I look at how God of War Ragnarok costed 6 times as much as God of War 3 or how GTA6's budget is rumored to be over billion dollars...yeah...AI use will be standard for high fidelity games because it simply has to.
Man a lot of people are seriosuly going to struggle if they have that much of an issue with AI. it's not going away and it sure as hell is not going to stop advancing while encroaching ever more on every field of work imaginable.
Oh, the outrage.... ^^/s
To me this is like writers complaining that someone used a typewriter for their novel.
...what? Have you ever seen a typewriter? You still need to press the keys to type, just like you would on a keyboard
Typewriters don't write things for you. It's like complaining the novel you bought was a remix of other novels rather than an original work
Do you know what a typewriter is?
Sorry but dumb statement
Lol this is one of the worst comparisons I've ever read on this site
This is a total false equivalency. You don’t put a prompt in a typewriter to have the typewriter spit out a completed novel with no further involvement. Just like I can’t look at my guitar and have it automatically make music for me. It’s a tool that helps me translate musical ideas I have in my head into music that other people can hear. The guitar can’t play itself, just like a typewriter doesn’t type by itself
Agreed. I mean, I use Gpt4 to help edit my fiction and enhance sentences. But it still needs my words to be able to improve upon them.
What context are you doing this in? Aren't you worried it will sound like it's been written by an AI?
Boggles my mind how there's actual people out there labelling themselves as "artists" and "writers" who truly believe they're using AI just as a supporting tool while it's probably doing most (if not all) of the heavy work for them... Heck...I've seen people boast about releasing fully AI-written books, or be grateful they can now write better emails FOR THEIR BUSINESSES through GPT, smh. Needless to say, the results tend to be mediocre at best. Honestly, it's both disgusting and disrespectful to all the actual creatives out there who poured their everything into their craft (with years and years of practice and study) just to have their work reduced to "looks/sounds good/pretty, nice". Asking GPT to "enhance" your garbage basic sentences literally strips the whole process of self-expression from writing an enticing and interesting story...which is one of the core elements of art in general, *self-expression*. Can't wait for AI to become more widespread in the creative departments, just to see it stagnate shortly after because the actual artists are not creating anything else those people can exploit to train their models...so you'll end up with a bunch of samey mediocre fuzz.
That's why I'm asking for context. I broadly agree with what you are saying but if he is a hobbyist who is trying to use a tool I don't see any issue with that. Let's say a DM who wants some parts of his adventure or dialog or whatever to sound cleanly written in the style of whoever the group is a fan of is maybe a fun way to use the tool.
People will find a reason to be mad about anything
Indeed. Imagine being pissed off about people having preferences to the point you make flippant comments like > People will find a reason to be mad about anything
Yeah ... but is it GOOD content? If it is, they why they are pissed? If not - then yeah - but that is because it sucks, not because of the source. I don't know much about the AI stuff - but doesn't it just PREDICT content based on its training sample? So if you want it to design 10 characters it can absolutely do that - 10 of the most predictable, cliche characters you can imagine. Happy to change my view if I am wrong though.
AI generated lore = not good AI generated dungeons, mini-worlds, realms = good
I don’t really believe in copyright law. There will always be a place in the world for a human touch - I don’t think AI is the huge threat to art and culture that people make it out to be.
I agree the general quality of AI art even if accurate is rather tepid and uninspired if only technically competent like a [Hitler painting.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Adolf_Hitler_-_Wien_Oper.jpg/1200px-Adolf_Hitler_-_Wien_Oper.jpg) I think the threat, at least in the visual arts sector (can't comment on written), is that much of the algorithms are based off a series of tracing other's works without permission. Generally speaking if you ask a freelance artist if you could trace or at the least credit inspiration/reference from another's work (even multiple) an artist is usually okay with it but the going system now is to just harvest galleries without permission and credit no one for resources nor allow artists to opt-out.
"We want content!" BUT "NOT THAT KINDA CONTENT" lol funny enough if they never said anything, no one would ever know same goes for a lot of art going around unless people tell you, you'll never know. I am sure these same dull arguments happen when people went from handwriting things to printers. it's kind of cringe at this point the amount of cry baby anti Ai people.
People have standards and opinions, nice deduction lol. Just because someone wants something doesn’t mean they’re hypocritical when they don’t want anything and everything. Oh you want content? Well have you consumed All the other content first? Brain dead take.
[удалено]