AI generated assets and disclosure

[pioruns]

I feel this request as psychological or political, but not technical. This reminds me of long gone discussions when some people didn't want to use apps developed with Turbo Pascal or compiled by some given compiler.

Given this and other topics that are against AI usage but never really told why they are against AI usage except that it's "controversial", I decided to never disclose anything about the tools I use during development again. Be it programming, be it some text I write, be it some images I produce. I know what work I did, I know what part of that work is mine, I know that what I publish doesn't violate the terms and conditions on which my work is based. I use publicly available state of the art tools to be efficient in what I do. Tools develop and change over time and make you more productive. Be it coding, translating or drawing. Back then it was Turbo Pascal, today it's modern IDE's with code completion that write half of the code for you - and AI.

Well done with your decision. Let others argue among themselves, while you are fully within your rights to use the tools available, with the proper licenses, to create and share your artwork.

For example, open-source or other free-for-commercial-use image generation tools, including AI, are no different from other open-source graphical tools like GIMP. How you choose to use them is entirely up to you. I agree that you are not obligated to disclose anything about the tools you use.

[mmmPI]

I don't expect Wube to police the tag. They don't police any tags currently, and this new one would be no different. I don't expect it to catch every AI generated asset, but it'd be helpful for people wishing to avoid it or people who wish to experience it.

Repeating it doesn't make it more true, it will be misleading, a pain to maintain and monitor for modders that don't want to have to do extra work to cater to particular segment of the players that is both the most extreme kind of picky on the matter and unwilling to spend the extra few minutes their condition require to read the mods description to make sure they don't download something they are psychologically alergic to.

If you had any idea how assest in mods are very often shared, and the work of several person that can end up in another one's mod, you wouldn't be asking for something that in practice makes little sense, i can't believe modders will try to search for the whole chain of people who contributed and ask them their process to make sure they can put or not the proper label.

Those saying they disclose the tools they use, thank you! This is a kind thing to do.

Thank you, will continue to do in the description of my mods, because i think it helps people to understand how tools works and what is the work that was done for the mod, what players can expect, i believe it makes more sense than a simplistic label that i wouldn't use, if your mod is 90% code that took month to develop and you only needed a visual for a detail of the thing and you used AI and liked it, it's not the same as if you publish only AI reskin of something and no code, or if you used and AI to write the math function you needed in lua. I don't think it's kind to help people entrench themselves in irrationnal behavior.

Like I said, i don't expect this tag to be policed by Wube. Consider it an act of kindness, and an easy out for people who otherwise might be upset when they get a few hours into your mod and are unpleasantly surprised by the content.

if you see the thumbnail is AI just don't click it ... if you don't see it's AI and you learn afterward, that's like unwatching a movie where they used CGI imo, it's ridiculous.

[mmmPI]

Well done with your decision. Let kids fight between thenselves, while you are totally within your right to use tools available, with appropriate licenses, to create and share your artwork.
For example, open source or other free for commercial use image generation tools like AI etc, are no different from other open source graphical tools like GIMP. It's up to you how you want to use them. I agree with you that you are not obliged to disclose anything about your tools.

I can see the attempt at derailing the topic by needlessly calling people kids which is probably best avoided, i believe your second point is more interesting, i think explaining how AI works in practice can help address some concern that may arise because it's new and awareness doesn't spread at a uniform pace for everyone. But i understand it misses the point when it's more of a philosophical thing that some players have decided to be "against" and that in such case it shouldn't put the burden to justify their works onto everyone because some people uses AI and other don't like it. If you think your work speak for itself, why bother taking time to try and justify it right ? ^^

[pioruns]

I can see the attempt at derailing the topic by needlessly calling people kids which is probably best avoided, i believe your second point is more interesting, i think explaining how AI works in practice can help address some concern that may arise because it's new and awareness doesn't spread at a uniform pace for everyone. But i understand it misses the point when it's more of a philosophical thing that some players have decided to be "against" and that in such case it shouldn't put the burden to justify their works onto everyone because some people uses AI and other don't like it. If you think your work speak for itself, why bother taking time to try and justify it right ? ^^

Thanks for your feedback. I actually rewrote my post and removed the mention of "kids", my apologies. I focused more on the point about using available tools with proper licences and letting your work speak for itself.

I agree with you that explaining how AI works in practice can help address some concerns, but ultimately, when some people are philosophically against AI, it should not fall on the creator to justify their work.

[Twisted6]

Can we get the option to ignore certain posters or make it a rule that AI content has to be clearly marked? I asked a particular poster to clearly tag their AI content and they deleted my post.

[mmmPI]

that's hard to define what is clearly marked because some people will ignore description and still complain, how did you know it was AI ?

[Twisted6]

that's hard to define what is clearly marked because some people will ignore description and still complain, how did you know it was AI ?

It's stated down in the more detailed descriptions but many people installing the mod from the in game browser won't see that.

[mmmPI]

It's stated down in the more detailed descriptions

That's why i deleted your post, since it's already mentionned in the description of the mod, i believe there was no time to waste arguing for a particular case that seemed to be only for the sake of it, for the more general case, i doubt there's going to be anything new that wasn't mentionned there : 131622

TL dr :

Should you mark your mod AI if you used one to translate some receipe ? if you used one to rework some public asset you kitbash for your mod ? if you used an AI to write the lua math formula you needed ? Those are questions that i believe a modder doesn't need to ask themselves to know if some random person on the internet think the label "AI" should or shouldn't be applied. It's a bit like asking if the picture is "authentic" or if it was photoshopped and you just took it from public domain without knowing. There are context where it matters and others where it doesn't. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for how the use of AI matters in a factorio mod beyond personnal preference.

The "clearer" flag for wether or not something is AI, to me, is a description of the process that leads to the creation of the things, which is what you apparently considered "not clear enough" , and you would prefer a simplistic "AI" label, not a good point, how can modders measure the pickyness of randoms people on the internet ? I don't believe the "i hate ai slop", people can't see when it's AI or not if it's well done, it's more "i hate lazy stuff" , but you don't need AI for this, some wants a label so they can freely hate and point fingers, and they would even if you put an "AI" label on something that's not AI. It's quite funny to test especially for music.

but many people installing the mod from the in game browser won't see that.

Well they should read the descriptions if they have such irritability about certain technology, that didn't trigger when then saw the thumbnail, but would still cause irreparable harm worse than downloading a mod that has a bug or doesn't work or isn't maintained.

Ignoring author could be more useful for langage issue than anything else i could think of, cuz maybe you couldn't even read the description.

[jodokus31]

A lot of coding is AI assisted nowadays, so there is that. The mod dev has to approve it, though.

I think, it's more about creative content like assets, etc.

[mmmPI]

I think, it's more about creative content like assets, etc.

Yep and then you have shaders and particules or overlay which can be bit of both, and you have CGI in movies that uses AI which causes no problem to most people when they learn about it afterward , and mods that are asset straight up ripped of from another game with or without the license allowing ... for the trial in appropriation/low effort, there's no need for AI unfortunatly.

I do share the idea that there's a difference between code and pictures or music, but code can be creative too, it's only certain types of code that are like mathematics where there's like "one solution" that feel "not creative" more like a standard many people contributed to establish/to find, that i feel really differs from pictures or music.

[jodokus31]

I think, it's more about creative content like assets, etc.

Yep and then you have shaders and particules or overlay which can be bit of both, and you have CGI in movies that uses AI which causes no problem to most people when they learn about it afterward , and mods that are asset straight up ripped of from another game with or without the license allowing ... for the trial in appropriation/low effort, there's no need for AI unfortunatly.

I do share the idea that there's a difference between code and pictures or music, but code can be creative too, it's only certain types of code that are like mathematics where there's like "one solution" that feel "not creative" more like a standard many people contributed to establish/to find, that i feel really differs from pictures or music.

I think, the difference is, when AI comes up with something, you couldn't do yourself. But when you use AI as helper to be more efficient, but you could theoretically do it yourself, it's less of a problem. But there is probably a vague border and it's hard to distinguish, even for oneself.

AI assisted coding is more, that it proposes stuff, you are likely to implement manually anyway, but reduces the tedium to write everything down. More like auto-completion. But you could also ask AI to code a certain algorithm or a UI for something, which you couldn't do yourself from scratch without learning the concepts, and then it gets more problematic.

On youtube, f.e. I see people creating music with AI, probably write some lyrics and ask AI to write a song with the lyrics in the style of XY, They don't even mention, that the music was created by AI and they even publish it on spotify or such. The lyrics are nice and all, but they likely couldn't make the music by themselves.
I really would like it to be marked like that, because it gets harder to recognize. I guess, the situation is similar with mods, where people just want to avoid those, but it's also a stretch, what is human enough. Gonna be tough

[Twisted6]

+1 for this. I personally avoid AI content like the plague. It's unoriginal and easy to pump out en mass burying the original content.

[Twisted6]

I think, it's more about creative content like assets, etc.

Yep and then you have shaders and particules or overlay which can be bit of both, and you have CGI in movies that uses AI which causes no problem to most people when they learn about it afterward , and mods that are asset straight up ripped of from another game with or without the license allowing ... for the trial in appropriation/low effort, there's no need for AI unfortunatly.

I do share the idea that there's a difference between code and pictures or music, but code can be creative too, it's only certain types of code that are like mathematics where there's like "one solution" that feel "not creative" more like a standard many people contributed to establish/to find, that i feel really differs from pictures or music.

I think, the difference is, when AI comes up with something, you couldn't do yourself. But when you use AI as helper to be more efficient, but you could theoretically do it yourself, it's less of a problem. But there is probably a vague border and it's hard to distinguish, even for oneself.

AI assisted coding is more, that it proposes stuff, you are likely to implement manually anyway, but reduces the tedium to write everything down. More like auto-completion. But you could also ask AI to code a certain algorithm or a UI for something, which you couldn't do yourself from scratch without learning the concepts, and then it gets more problematic.

On youtube, f.e. I see people creating music with AI, probably write some lyrics and ask AI to write a song with the lyrics in the style of XY, They don't even mention, that the music was created by AI and they even publish it on spotify or such. The lyrics are nice and all, but they likely couldn't make the music by themselves.
I really would like it to be marked like that, because it gets harder to recognize. I guess, the situation is similar with mods, where people just want to avoid those, but it's also a stretch, what is human enough. Gonna be tough

The main problem with AI content, other than it being unoriginal, is that it's easy to pump out en mass which buries non-AI content. This is why we need a filter. Case and point you've posted about 20 music packs made with AI which is almost a 3rd of the music packs on the portal.

[jodokus31]

I think, it's more about creative content like assets, etc.

Yep and then you have shaders and particules or overlay which can be bit of both, and you have CGI in movies that uses AI which causes no problem to most people when they learn about it afterward , and mods that are asset straight up ripped of from another game with or without the license allowing ... for the trial in appropriation/low effort, there's no need for AI unfortunatly.

I do share the idea that there's a difference between code and pictures or music, but code can be creative too, it's only certain types of code that are like mathematics where there's like "one solution" that feel "not creative" more like a standard many people contributed to establish/to find, that i feel really differs from pictures or music.

I think, the difference is, when AI comes up with something, you couldn't do yourself. But when you use AI as helper to be more efficient, but you could theoretically do it yourself, it's less of a problem. But there is probably a vague border and it's hard to distinguish, even for oneself.

AI assisted coding is more, that it proposes stuff, you are likely to implement manually anyway, but reduces the tedium to write everything down. More like auto-completion. But you could also ask AI to code a certain algorithm or a UI for something, which you couldn't do yourself from scratch without learning the concepts, and then it gets more problematic.

On youtube, f.e. I see people creating music with AI, probably write some lyrics and ask AI to write a song with the lyrics in the style of XY, They don't even mention, that the music was created by AI and they even publish it on spotify or such. The lyrics are nice and all, but they likely couldn't make the music by themselves.
I really would like it to be marked like that, because it gets harder to recognize. I guess, the situation is similar with mods, where people just want to avoid those, but it's also a stretch, what is human enough. Gonna be tough

The main problem with AI content, other than it being unoriginal, is that it's easy to pump out en mass which buries non-AI content. This is why we need a filter. Case and point you've posted about 20 music packs made with AI which is almost a 3rd of the music packs on the portal.

I would argue, if you can pump out stuff en mass, it's probably not really original content. And I also see a problem with that.
If you do something original with help of AI tools, it's not orders of magnitudes faster, but a bit and you have to focus less on mechanical details.

Regarding music, I think, there are actually people liking the AI music, it sounds a bit unreal and too polished, and sometimes weird.

[mmmPI]

The main problem with AI content, other than it being unoriginal, is that it's easy to pump out en mass which buries non-AI content. This is why we need a filter. Case and point you've posted about 20 music packs made with AI which is almost a 3rd of the music packs on the portal.

That's a bad argument, it's easy to pump out en mass non-AI content, just pick public music free from license and put them as a mod, people already do this, tons of unoriginal music, and you can do that for 3D asset too ,it was mentionned in this thread and in the other, nothing new here apart from the misguided personnal attack that shows you definitly can't read a description, half my mods are music instruments so you can make music yourself x)

I would argue, if you can pump out stuff en mass, it's probably not really original content. And I also see a problem with that.
If you do something original with help of AI tools, it's not orders of magnitudes faster, but a bit and you have to focus less on mechanical details.

Comon sense hit hard x) I agree with you here, and it's fairly possible to create original stuff with AI , doesn't necessarily takes time but that's the same if you take an instrument and play a little improvisation and people won't be able to tell if it's AI if it's well done.

I think, the difference is, when AI comes up with something, you couldn't do yourself. But when you use AI as helper to be more efficient, but you could theoretically do it yourself, it's less of a problem. But there is probably a vague border and it's hard to distinguish, even for oneself.

Here is a tutorial i came accross on discord :3D model to factorio sprite with or wthout AI which i tried to follow and realize it's not that easy, even if it's "AI", if you want to end up with something nice that blend into the game like what the author showed.

I use AI like wolfram alpha to do math i couldn't do on my own, and learn math, i don't even think it's a problem to use AI for things you couldn't do yourself , like translating the idea you have for a song in a langage you don't speak.

Regarding music, I think, there are actually people liking the AI music, it sounds a bit unreal and too polished, and sometimes weird.

For music it's the same i think, i wrote several explanations throughout my mods of the processes which i won't link in here, but if you are the kind of person to listen to a song in repeat mode, or to listen to 10 hours version of some songs, i think originality isn't really a big deal, if you remix a song from the 70's or 60's or 80's it's the same some people are mad but it's fairly comon in music x) like computer love is said to have been sampled in more than 100 other songs by major artist later !!! source, same for synthetic voices, or even synthetic instrument, those are not real pianos and guitars omg, those are just machines, they never do a foul play, they are too mechanic, they have no soul yet techno is popular genre

Regarding AI music, for the most recent stuff there's no difference humans can tell with non-ai music for about 97% of humans

[mmmPI]

I would argue, if you can pump out stuff en mass, it's probably not really original content. And I also see a problem with that.

The more i think of this the more i think there's something to argue against x) i'm sorry but it's too simplistic, as that just disqualify people that made their workflow efficient, as if it was something you can achieve it would disqualify your work ? the same work made slower and with less efficient method would be better ? Like if you are going to make trees or rocks for your virtual world, you will want to have "many" different trees, you make a couple and you use AI to make couple more in the style of the first few you made yourself, that's just what AI are good at, you pick the proper one where the AI extrapolated the way you wanted to keep things consistent, the oppposite of original, but no problem at all to me.

[Koub]

People may have various reasons to want avoiding AI generated content. I often see those people depicted as rooted in the past, like old people who are opposed to new technology "just because", things were better before, ...

I, for example, try to avoid AI generated content for various reasons. On the one hand, I recognise generative AI as a powerful tool. I know that the industry (taken in a broad sense, including pharmaceutical, tech, ...) is increasingly relying on gen AI tools to improve productivity, for its ability to process huge amounts of data, to derive new stuff based on known or recognisable patterns, ...

I also know that the "I won't ever make use of anything for which GenAI was used" stance if fundamentally unreachable. New drugs and vaccines, new industrial processes, new materials, are created with the assistance of AI. Rejecting totally AI would mean building myself a hut in the wilderness, and only surviving with what my backyard produces.

Nonetheless, I wish to minimise my use of GenAI because I know that training LLMs is awfully resource intensive, a plea for carbon emissions, while I want to minimise as much as possible my own environmental impact. Yes, I'm aware it's a droplet in the ocean, and yes, I'm still willing to put some effort to reduce my footprint, no matter how minuscule the difference it makes. And I'm thankful when given the tools to do so.

I also dislike other things in GenAI like the way today's leaders in the fiels have attained their position by pillaging everything that was produced by humans on the Internet, and making big money out of it now, without ever giving anything in return for the work from the past they have exploited - while myself am subject to respecting copyright on intellectual property for 70 years as per my country's laws, and I better not download a pirate version of a movie, or I'll be a delinquant. I'm aware that me not using a mod with a GenAI thumbnail will neither change anything to the grand scheme of things, nor automagically fix all the world's injustices, but once again, I'm glad when given the choice, to be able to decide on my own if I'm willing to pay the moral price of using something or not.

[Koub]

[Koub] Also found out there were two threads about basically the same thing, merged them. I know it makes things harder to track when they have lived for some time, but I don't want a multiplication of threads with the same discussion.

[mmmPI]

People may have various reasons to want avoiding AI generated content. I often see those people depicted as rooted in the past, like old people who are opposed to new technology "just because", things were better before, ...

I, for example, try to avoid AI generated content for various reasons.

Yeah exactly like people who said microwave was going to melt their brain or photography would render painting obsolete !

So far the main reason you listed is "ressource intensive" , which i can assure you isn't the case when i run the AI on my notebook, it's less ressource intensive than running a megabase in factorio, and i have the control over the emission

I also dislike other things in GenAI like the way today's leaders in the fiels have attained their position by pillaging everything that was produced by humans on the Internet, and making big money out of it now, without ever giving anything in return for the work from the past they have exploited - while myself am subject to respecting copyright on intellectual property for 70 years as per my country's laws, and I better not download a pirate version of a movie, or I'll be a delinquant. I'm aware that me not using a mod with a GenAI thumbnail will neither change anything to the grand scheme of things, nor automagically fix all the world's injustices, but once again, I'm glad when given the choice, to be able to decide on my own if I'm willing to pay the moral price of using something or not.

So you're saying people who trained AI are bad pirates because they make money out of it, but you're a good pirate because you do it to avoid paying them money ? Curious moral condemnation of one form of appropriation versus another x)

[Tertius]

The main problem with AI content, other than it being unoriginal, is that it's easy to pump out en mass which buries non-AI content. This is why we need a filter. Case and point you've posted about 20 music packs made with AI which is almost a 3rd of the music packs on the portal.

I agree that I don't want mass generated, unoriginal, similar stuff. Because of that I'm not following the big music charts at all - everything there is mass generated, even if it was created by a human. It's all similar, no matter if AI generated or not - it's the industry that's doing that. Tagging AI content isn't a solution to that, because there is still duplicated, unoriginal (uninteresting) content. My filter for music is time - if it's still around 10 years later, it has some kind of quality, so it's worth looking into.

Because of that I mentioned before I will not disclose if any work of mine was made with AI assistance, because this would make people ignore my work for no reason. If I ever release something (I didn't so far for Factorio, and I guess I will never, because I don't have good enough ideas), it's an original idea from me and AI usage was just to speed up development (coding assistance) or to provide required content such as generating graphics assets (I'm able to design and to code, but I'm definitely not able to paint).
So any work of mine would be original and high quality (in my perception), not mass generated unoriginal AI hallucinations. Just instead of me explaining a painter what to paint as graphics asset, it would be me carefully providing a proper prompt, then painted by an AI instead.