A.I usage for thumbnails on mods

[Dr.Cola]

I've noticed that a lot of mods are using A.I generated images for their thumbnails. This is to me a problem as A.I images is low effort and an insult to creativity.
There are even mods that are changing their thumbnails from what used to be an actual image of the mod itself to... an A.I image.

An example is the mod "Loaders Modernized"
The first image actually shows off the mod.
Second image is just A.I generated image that doesn't say anything.

Skärmbild 2025-08-02 050224.png (91.99 KiB) Viewed 509 times

Skärmbild 2025-08-02 050432.png (65.04 KiB) Viewed 509 times

[Kingdud]

I personally don't mind it. I'm not an artist myself. I am a programmer. There are three camps of programmers: 1) Those who embrace AI as a helpful tool for cranking out large amounts of code FAR faster than we could code it ourselves. 2) Those who view it as 'spicy math' and don't get its utility 3) those who see it as a threat to their career because they like doing work that a machine could do.

So...embrace people without art skills being able to make art. I see it as an absolute win.

[Dr.Cola]

I personally don't mind it. I'm not an artist myself. I am a programmer. There are three camps of programmers: 1) Those who embrace AI as a helpful tool for cranking out large amounts of code FAR faster than we could code it ourselves. 2) Those who view it as 'spicy math' and don't get its utility 3) those who see it as a threat to their career because they like doing work that a machine could do.

So...embrace people without art skills being able to make art. I see it as an absolute win.

You are not seeing the problem. A.I uses a lot of stolen scraped data and art from the internet without consent. And people who don't have art "skills" can still make art. Even a crude drawing is more effort and nicer to see than A.I that guesstimates shit.

Also first point is just vibe coding that can make bad and inefficient if not vulnerable code.

Either way. Outside of ethical concerns about its usage, I am mostly talking about it reflecting poorly on the mod pages as it's a hub for creativity and A.I it is not.

[Kingdud]

You are not seeing the problem. A.I uses a lot of stolen scraped data and art from the internet without consent. And people who don't have art "skills" can still make art. Even a crude drawing is more effort and nicer to see than A.I that guesstimates shit.

Also first point is just vibe coding that can make bad and inefficient if not vulnerable code.

Either way. Outside of ethical concerns about its usage, I am mostly talking about it reflecting poorly on the mod pages as it's a hub for creativity and A.I it is not.

No, I'm seeing the problem. Where the hell do you think it learned to program? You have one set of skills that are acquired through years of practice and training, and so do I. What is so deeply offensive is that the same matrix that generates the same code I might write can spit out a picture as good as human artists in a fraction of the time with an amount of energy that doesn't cost as much as even a single worker. That studio ghibli thing, for example. It can make episodes in minutes to hours, instead of months.

I understand this is an existential level threat to you. AI art and AI programming are roughly at the same level. They are good for basic tasks, but once you ask for complex things it tends to fall apart. My skill is learning, not programming. I can let something else do the programming and I can learn a skill it doesn't have yet, like how to turn a raspberry pi into a fully automated brisket smoker.

There's a really good book called "The Sum of All Fears". The movie by the same name is not meaningfully related to the book. In the book there is a line, in reference to atomic weapons, that is something like "You can't undiscover physics". AI is here. It isn't leaving anymore than atomic weapons are leaving. The basic understandings of how to build it and why it works are out there. They cannot be undiscovered unless you're willing to murder a few billion people, Emperor of Mankind style.

I'm old enough that I've watched whole professions go away as technology came into existence that utterly did away with them. It sucks for the people who wanted to spend their lives doing that thing. But, truly, if your personality is one of 'do one thing forever', go into farming, or ranching. People will always need to eat. Get into textiles or manufacturing. People will always need clothes. But trying to argue that AI needs to be banned? You might as well go live with the Amish. But you'll find out that even they embraced cell phones.

[Dr.Cola]

You are not seeing the problem. A.I uses a lot of stolen scraped data and art from the internet without consent. And people who don't have art "skills" can still make art. Even a crude drawing is more effort and nicer to see than A.I that guesstimates shit.

Also first point is just vibe coding that can make bad and inefficient if not vulnerable code.

Either way. Outside of ethical concerns about its usage, I am mostly talking about it reflecting poorly on the mod pages as it's a hub for creativity and A.I it is not.

No, I'm seeing the problem. Where the hell do you think it learned to program? You have one set of skills that are acquired through years of practice and training, and so do I. What is so deeply offensive is that the same matrix that generates the same code I might write can spit out a picture as good as human artists in a fraction of the time with an amount of energy that doesn't cost as much as even a single worker. That studio ghibli thing, for example. It can make episodes in minutes to hours, instead of months.

I understand this is an existential level threat to you. AI art and AI programming are roughly at the same level. They are good for basic tasks, but once you ask for complex things it tends to fall apart. My skill is learning, not programming. I can let something else do the programming and I can learn a skill it doesn't have yet, like how to turn a raspberry pi into a fully automated brisket smoker.

There's a really good book called "The Sum of All Fears". The movie by the same name is not meaningfully related to the book. In the book there is a line, in reference to atomic weapons, that is something like "You can't undiscover physics". AI is here. It isn't leaving anymore than atomic weapons are leaving. The basic understandings of how to build it and why it works are out there. They cannot be undiscovered unless you're willing to murder a few billion people, Emperor of Mankind style.

I'm old enough that I've watched whole professions go away as technology came into existence that utterly did away with them. It sucks for the people who wanted to spend their lives doing that thing. But, truly, if your personality is one of 'do one thing forever', go into farming, or ranching. People will always need to eat. Get into textiles or manufacturing. People will always need clothes. But trying to argue that AI needs to be banned? You might as well go live with the Amish. But you'll find out that even they embraced cell phones.

No, I'm seeing the problem. Where the hell do you think it learned to program? You have one set of skills that are acquired through years of practice and training, and so do I. What is so deeply offensive is that the same matrix that generates the same code I might write can spit out a picture as good as human artists in a fraction of the time with an amount of energy that doesn't cost as much as even a single worker. That studio ghibli thing, for example. It can make episodes in minutes to hours, instead of months.

First of all the "A.I" does not understand or can even contextualize anything, it's LLM that is only predicting what you want. It can not make anything new, only mash it all together. That's why it steals an absurd amount of data by scraping every website it can find and trains on it. You might be getting decent code but it also learns bad coding and it can not tell the difference.

And extremely laughable about the energy bit. The data centres are polluting the environment and consuming such an extreme fucking amount of energy that there's talks/plans for nuclear power just for the data centres alone. LLMs fall apart and starts hallucinating very fast that it needs constant "reminders".

Here's the thing about art by the way. It's a form of expression. LLM does not have expression. It does not understand, it will never be truly A.I as that is not what LLMs are. It cannot contextualize anything as it isn't thinking.
I am not an artist myself, but if I wanted to make art then I will just pick up pen and paper and fucking draw and not rely on LLM that generates images out of stolen art without consent.

The whole Ghibli bit is fucking bullshit. It just makes nonsense that looks like Ghibli but won't be consistent in how it looks as well as hallucinating random nonsense details.

I understand this is an existential level threat to you. AI art and AI programming are roughly at the same level. They are good for basic tasks, but once you ask for complex things it tends to fall apart. My skill is learning, not programming. I can let something else do the programming and I can learn a skill it doesn't have yet, like how to turn a raspberry pi into a fully automated brisket smoker.

This just adds to the point of vibe coding. [Moderated]

I'm old enough that I've watched whole professions go away as technology came into existence that utterly did away with them. It sucks for the people who wanted to spend their lives doing that thing. But, truly, if your personality is one of 'do one thing forever', go into farming, or ranching. People will always need to eat. Get into textiles or manufacturing. People will always need clothes. But trying to argue that AI needs to be banned? You might as well go live with the Amish. But you'll find out that even they embraced cell phones.

Physical labour is different to mental tasks. And it's extremely different from human expression like art. And no you can not bring up software that automates and makes things easier for people. Because software has a purpose that works in specific ways for the tasks it needs to handle. Compare to a jack-of-all trades, master of none and shit at everything.

[mmmPI]

I've noticed that a lot of mods are using A.I generated images for their thumbnails. This is to me a problem as A.I images is low effort and an insult to creativity.

That kind of generic, judgmental, poorly argumented statement sounds like trolling quite a bit to me, or is at least ridiculous to hear for several reasons beyond the lack of any nuance, like you can steal someone's else stuff without AI, just take their image or their name and use it as yours that's even lower effort and woukd make the portal much worse no ?

There's so many different ways to use an AI to help for thumbnail than your rant sounds like ignorance when you call it an insult to creativity, this is because it makes it sound like you are going to explain what should be the limit on the creativity of other people and that you don't know much about making "art" yourself x)

You can see in my signature a link to a mod i made, where i spent several hours making the thumbnail with AI, i've done also other images without AI, the process is roughly the same for my case, because what takes time is making a balanced composition and blur the different elements that were mixed together, those being generated by AI or taken from public images sources doesn't change much the works that needs be done, when a screenshot from the game would take 10 second.

And extremely laughable about the energy bit. The data centres are polluting the environment and consuming such an extreme fucking amount of energy that there's talks/plans for nuclear power just for the data centres alone. LLMs fall apart and starts hallucinating very fast that it needs constant "reminders".

I think it was meant to illustrate the energy a human could put into something, not like electrical energy.

But your generic point is otherwise a concern to me, that's part of why i like to recombine "AI-generated images" from other people, to limit the number of requests. Now for your information, LLM can also run on notebook, without any data centre, i've also dowloaded a trained research model from a few years ago to see how it worked and enjoyed the experiment any further request to this model is only making my computer works for like 10 second, it cost only the energy i'm charging it with. Pointing out the energy cost when you see images sounds like a shortcut caused by lack of understanding to me, it may needlessly create solastalgia !

I think sharing such concern can be done more productively

You can't undiscover physics". AI is here. It isn't leaving anymore than atomic weapons are leaving. The basic understandings of how to build it and why it works are out there. They cannot be undiscovered unless you're willing to murder a few billion people, Emperor of Mankind style.

Sounds like fun premises for a video game, but in real life i agree, AI are there and it's not smart to reject it all under the premises that it's AI. There are some that exist only to remove the background to some images, which makes it easier to work with any source images, others that can transform, or magnify or adapt the style of a draft you make, which speeds up process and extend you own creativity, others that generate everything but you want to use parts of different results and you need to combine them yourself.

To me just looking at the mod portal there are more appealing thumbnails than others, i guess that's bound to happen, that's how taste works , there are some where the use of AI is not to my liking, too visible, "too lazy" and i can recognize them because i've been toying around with AI-generated images myself, but other times there are nuances, it's nicely done, and many times it's not visible in the end result wether or not an AI was used. An example is when you would ask an AI what kind of image would do well for a thumbnail, and you subsequently spend some time explaining the AI what the thumbnail should convey and describe the mod. Regarding art, you remove a huge chunk of the creative process, but to make thumbnails that have easily recognizable meaning, that's great !

I'm old enough that I've watched whole professions go away as technology came into existence that utterly did away with them. It sucks for the people who wanted to spend their lives doing that thing. But, truly, if your personality is one of 'do one thing forever', go into farming, or ranching. People will always need to eat.

Interestingly though, even in farming or ranching AI are used for automated irrigation control or even automated cow milking ! Could you believe that old king ? Would you allow such things in your realm ? x)

If your personality is one of "do one thing forever, maybe it's time to learn how to use AI" ( quote from that guy that sells AI)

[eugenekay]

I think that the usage of “Generated Art” for an introductory photo is a good Signal: it clearly indicates that the rest of the Project is low-effort slop, and can safely be ignored. Please go take an Art class in-person from a real Human, or at least try drawing with a Pencil - you will be surprised at the improvements from a week or two of doodling.

[mmmPI]

I think that the usage of “Generated Art” for an introductory photo is a good Signal: it clearly indicates that the rest of the Project is low-effort slop, and can safely be ignored. Please go take an Art class in-person from a real Human, or at least try drawing with a Pencil - you will be surprised at the improvements from a week or two of doodling.

How is this different than when the introductory photo is a screenshot of the game ?

Why so much aggressivity and why assume the person doesn't know how to do things differently too ?

[Dr.Cola]

I think that the usage of “Generated Art” for an introductory photo is a good Signal: it clearly indicates that the rest of the Project is low-effort slop, and can safely be ignored. Please go take an Art class in-person from a real Human, or at least try drawing with a Pencil - you will be surprised at the improvements from a week or two of doodling.

How is this different than when the introductory photo is a screenshot of the game ?

Why so much aggressivity and why assume the person doesn't know how to do things differently too ?

A screenshot of the mod says more than what an ai image generator ever can.

[eugenekay]

How is this different than when the introductory photo is a screenshot of the game ?

Why so much aggressivity and why assume the person doesn't know how to do things differently too ?

A simple screenshot is useful - it shows what the mod can do. A piece of hand-drawn art is beautiful - it shows that the Artist cared to take enough time to be creative. Stick figures or cartoon memes indicate that the Author is not an Artist - and they are willing to admit it. With Generated Art, none of these points are true - it is presenting an exaggerated techno-hallucination as your own work, which is somehow simultaneously not infringing copyrights and able to re-create those art styles and copyrighted characters exactly - pardon me for not believing the rheotoric. Therefore I can assume that the rest of the Mod is probably similarly low-effort.

I am not Aggressive? I am simply stating my personal reasons to not download or interact with a subset of Content, in response to an open-ended Public Opinion / Question. I encourage everybody to participate in some sort of learning or Growth - it makes you into a better person. If this mild opinion Offends you or causes Anger then perhaps it is time to take a break from the Internet.

[mmmPI]

How is this different than when the introductory photo is a screenshot of the game ?

Why so much aggressivity and why assume the person doesn't know how to do things differently too ?

A simple screenshot is useful - it shows what the mod can do. A piece of hand-drawn art is beautiful - it shows that the Artist cared to take enough time to be creative. Stick figures or cartoon memes indicate that the Author is not an Artist - and they are willing to admit it. With Generated Art, none of these points are true - it is presenting an exaggerated techno-hallucination as your own work, which is somehow simultaneously not infringing copyrights and able to re-create those art styles and copyrighted characters exactly - pardon me for not

None of this adress the fact that it's also low-effort to use a screenshot, and since what is beautiful is subjective that is not much of argument, that's just how taste works ....

Also that's funny because i'm adding mods that adds sounds, like music, so how do i take a screenshot of what my mods do ? to make it "beautiful"

And further more it's not true that you need to care to make pen and pencil drawing, i have tendancy to draw in every margin of books and cigarette paper, it's just mindless drawing with no effort compared to the energy and time needed to make an idea in your mind comes to reality for a thumbnail, using AI or not. I find it ridiculous when i read that using AI is because you can't draw with pen and paper.

I am not Aggressive? I am simply stating my personal reasons to not download or interact with a subset of Content, in response to an open-ended Public Opinion / Question. I encourage everybody to participate in some sort of learning or Growth - it makes you into a better person. If this mild opinion Offends you or causes Anger then perhaps it is time to take a break from the Internet.

I believe you used a statement that's on the same register that if i was encouraging you to wash your mouth because it's healthy and no-one wants to have one that's filled with crap. Even though it's true, it sort of imply that currently you may be in need of doing the subsquent activity which is kinda insulting and could be seen as agressive, or at least motivated by hatred and ignorance of the state of your mouth

I believe it's kinda of unfair and only motivated by ignorance and hatred to suggest someone need to learn how to draw with a pen and pencil because they have used ai generated picture on their mod thumbnail and would indeed qualify your answer as agressive without quotation mark. I am simply stating my personnal opinion there about how your statement was received

[mmmPI]

I think that the usage of “Generated Art” for an introductory photo is a good Signal: it clearly indicates that the rest of the Project is low-effort slop, and can safely be ignored. Please go take an Art class in-person from a real Human, or at least try drawing with a Pencil - you will be surprised at the improvements from a week or two of doodling.

How is this different than when the introductory photo is a screenshot of the game ?

Why so much aggressivity and why assume the person doesn't know how to do things differently too ?

A screenshot of the mod says more than what an ai image generator ever can.

Same question for you genius, what screenshot for a mod that adds music or sound ?

[MrSmoothieHuman]

I think that the usage of “Generated Art” for an introductory photo is a good Signal: it clearly indicates that the rest of the Project is low-effort slop, and can safely be ignored. Please go take an Art class in-person from a real Human, or at least try drawing with a Pencil - you will be surprised at the improvements from a week or two of doodling.

How is this different than when the introductory photo is a screenshot of the game ?

Why so much aggressivity and why assume the person doesn't know how to do things differently too ?

A screenshot of the mod says more than what an ai image generator ever can.

Same question for you genius, what screenshot for a mod that adds music or sound ?

just… take a screenshot of the literal programmable speaker, maybe draw some lines coming out of it?
that took 5 seconds to come up with.

and how would an AI generated image depict it?

[Dr.Cola]

How is this different than when the introductory photo is a screenshot of the game ?

Why so much aggressivity and why assume the person doesn't know how to do things differently too ?

A simple screenshot is useful - it shows what the mod can do. A piece of hand-drawn art is beautiful - it shows that the Artist cared to take enough time to be creative. Stick figures or cartoon memes indicate that the Author is not an Artist - and they are willing to admit it. With Generated Art, none of these points are true - it is presenting an exaggerated techno-hallucination as your own work, which is somehow simultaneously not infringing copyrights and able to re-create those art styles and copyrighted characters exactly - pardon me for not

None of this adress the fact that it's also low-effort to use a screenshot, and since what is beautiful is subjective that is not much of argument, that's just how taste works ....

Also that's funny because i'm adding mods that adds sounds, like music, so how do i take a screenshot of what my mods do ? to make it "beautiful"

And further more it's not true that you need to care to make pen and pencil drawing, i have tendancy to draw in every margin of books and cigarette paper, it's just mindless drawing with no effort compared to the energy and time needed to make an idea in your mind comes to reality for a thumbnail, using AI or not. I find it ridiculous when i read that using AI is because you can't draw with pen and paper.

I am not Aggressive? I am simply stating my personal reasons to not download or interact with a subset of Content, in response to an open-ended Public Opinion / Question. I encourage everybody to participate in some sort of learning or Growth - it makes you into a better person. If this mild opinion Offends you or causes Anger then perhaps it is time to take a break from the Internet.

I believe you used a statement that's on the same register that if i was encouraging you to wash your mouth because it's healthy and no-one wants to have one that's filled with crap. Even though it's true, it sort of imply that currently you may be in need of doing the subsquent activity which is kinda insulting and could be seen as agressive, or at least motivated by hatred and ignorance of the state of your mouth

I believe it's kinda of unfair and only motivated by ignorance and hatred to suggest someone need to learn how to draw with a pen and pencil because they have used ai generated picture on their mod thumbnail and would indeed qualify your answer as agressive without quotation mark. I am simply stating my personnal opinion there about how your statement was received

None of this adress the fact that it's also low-effort to use a screenshot, and since what is beautiful is subjective that is not much of argument, that's just how taste works ....

Showing what the mod actually is with a screenshot is not low-effort. If it shows something from the mod itself then you are actually showing the mod itself so I do not see your point here.

Also that's funny because i'm adding mods that adds sounds, like music, so how do i take a screenshot of what my mods do ? to make it "beautiful"

Same question for you genius, what screenshot for a mod that adds music or sound ?

Showing the example screenshots you have in your mod does it. Making something yourself, even if a crude doodle is enough.
Your fixation on "beautiful" means you are seeing art as something competitive and anything less is not good enough.

And further more it's not true that you need to care to make pen and pencil drawing, i have tendancy to draw in every margin of books and cigarette paper, it's just mindless drawing with no effort compared to the energy and time needed to make an idea in your mind comes to reality for a thumbnail, using AI or not. I find it ridiculous when i read that using AI is because you can't draw with pen and paper.

Then just fucking do that, use these drawings of yours for your mod. It is not mindless to draw something because there is intention in it, even boredom.
AI does not have any intention, it just gives you a fuckton of shit that it "thinks" you want. It's not even quantity over quality as that would be a compliment to how it actually is. No, it's just complete and pure, insane amount of quantity, that quality isn't even a concept in comparison.

It's the result of complete and total scraping of the internet to steal everything it can for "data". There was no consent given to have their works stolen and plagiarized into homogeneous slop.
"AI" only takes. It does not give, only regurgitates. This is NOT like someone emulating someone's style and learning from it and making something new.

And I am really, really hoping you are not going to use the "art gatekeeping" argument that a lot of pro-ai users constantly have done. Because there is no gate to art and what people are mad about is that AI generated shit is pissing and shitting all over the idea of art.

[Bilka]

The only thing this topic seems to generate is insults and it's semi-related to Factorio in the first place, so I'm locking this. Please take your argument somewhere not this forum.