Mandatory AI tag

[radical_larry]

Can we please have an AI tag for mods? Looking through the recently updated mods list is becoming more difficult every day. Something like "Did you use AI for any parts of the mod or description?" with a Y/N tickbox selection while the confirm button for uploading a mod is greyed out until one of the options is chosen. Yes people can lie, but most would answer truthfully when asked, I assume.
This isn't a discussion on whether AI good or AI bad, this is about being able to filter AI content when looking for something in the mod portal, which I think most people would agree on being a good thing.

If that's not something Wube wants to do, then alternatively being able to keep a personal blacklist of mod authors/mods would be great, similar to the current bookmarking system, so these authors or mods are omitted when that user looks for mods.

[mmmPI]

Sir, this is a factorio forum

Indeed, it has rules and advices, one of them is to use the research before creating new thread, because although you may think your idea is very original and unique, it can happen that other players had just the same exact idea before mind you ! Great minds think alike or something x)

But this one isn't particularly original is it ? x) Unexpectedly it already happened several times :

viewtopic.php?p=684241

If that's not something Wube wants to do, then alternatively being able to keep a personal blacklist of mod authors/mods would be great, similar to the current bookmarking system, so these authors or mods are omitted when that user looks for mods.

That already exists too !

Something like "Did you use AI for any parts of the mod or description?" with a Y/N tickbox selection while the confirm button for uploading a mod is greyed out until one of the options is chosen. Yes people can lie, but most would answer truthfully when asked, I assume.

You would need a box for "i don't know i grabbed a public asset on the internet maybe it was made with AI i grabbed some leafs, some gears, some particules, some sound effect, from a place that doesn't have those kind of check box".

I used an AI to review the code and i corrected manually what the AI told me was inneficient or redundant , which tickbox should i use ?

I didn't used AI , i copied manually pieces of code from this and that public domain mod which were made with AI, which tickbox should i use ?

I used AI to teach me how to use the image editor with which i made the thumbnails, does that count as using AI for parts of the mods ?

Do you see pattern?

Yes, people that ask for this are usually required to be hand-held a lot more than people who may have just used an AI to write the blacklist script for them. And i'm not saying it's good or bad to be hand-held a lot x)

[radical_larry]

If that's not something Wube wants to do, then alternatively being able to keep a personal blacklist of mod authors/mods would be great, similar to the current bookmarking system, so these authors or mods are omitted when that user looks for mods.

That already exists too !

Where would I access this functionality? I can't find it.

You would need a box for "i don't know i grabbed a public asset on the internet maybe it was made with AI i grabbed some leafs, some gears, some particules, some sound effect, from a place that doesn't have those kind of check box".

No you wouldn't. This isn't a tax return form, there's no consequences for answering the question of "did you use AI to make this" in your own interpretation.

I just think it's funny how people who like to use AI for writing mods are really, really against having their mods tagged as such.
You'd think they'd be happy to allow people to seek out their mods by enabling the AI tag to filter out everything non-AI.

[mmmPI]

Where would I access this functionality? I can't find it.

You should read the linked thread.

I just think it's funny how people who like to use AI for writing mods are really, really against having their mods tagged as such.
You'd think they'd be happy to allow people to seek out their mods by enabling the AI tag to filter out everything non-AI.

I write in the description of my mods how i use AI because i think a tickbox is simplistic. I asked questions because i wouldn't know how to tag my mods, sorry to ruin the fun.

[radical_larry]

You should read the linked thread.

I did, I found no such thing.

I write in the description of my mods how i use AI because i think a tickbox is simplistic. I asked questions because i wouldn't know how to tag my mods, sorry to ruin the fun.

What's the difference between writing "I used AI to make this mod" into your description vs. a checkbox that says "I used AI to make this mod"? It's a pretty binary thing, and when uploading a mod you decide on how to tag it. The other tags also work without a perfect definition for them.
Imagine having a philosophical crisis on what constitutes logistics and that if the logistsics tag were to exist, we wouldn't know whether to check that box or not for our mods. That's what you're doing right now. Just tag the mods in good faith, it's not that complicated.

[mmmPI]

I did, I found no such thing.

Well if you can't find a link in a 3 page dicussion that you should have read before submitting the exact same request, imo, because otherwise you're going to repeat it all over again, you may not have been able to use to tool linked anyway, sorry, actually there may be no way for your particular case.

I write in the description of my mods how i use AI because i think a tickbox is simplistic. I asked questions because i wouldn't know how to tag my mods, sorry to ruin the fun.

What's the difference between writing "I used AI to make this mod" into your description vs. a checkbox that says "I used AI to make this mod"? It's a pretty binary thing

There is no difference, the question is missing the point, if i were to write the simplistic "I used AI to make this mod" as description, i wouldn't have expressed opposition to the simplistic nature of the tickbox, it's because such tickbox is simplistic in nature that i try to explain in the descriptions which parts of the mod were made with AI if any and how the AI was used. The difference is the nuance, a yes/no answer or tickbox won't give the same amount of information than on a description, unless one goes for the simplistic paraphrasing of that hypothetical tickbox in the description, which is a very specific case.

You seem to consider your idea of a tickbox as a solution to allow you to ignore mods that "relate to AI", but to me it's simplistic, if i decide to rework on a mod manually, and to fork it, but the inital modder use AI , but not me, then the fork , which may be 90% identical, with the same "AI slop" would logically be classified as " I DIDN'T USED AI" because that's what your wording is , and technically it would be true, i didn't used AI , i just forked a mod that someone else made with AI. Duuuhh

Some other people proposed a tick box saying something more along the line of "contain AI material", which in that case would have been ticked, but then you have cases where you don't know, you took a public asset on a public library that don't care about wether or not it's AI, that's why i asked previous question about your own pickyness level about what should be considered "AI"

[radical_larry]

I did, I found no such thing.

Well if you can't find a link in a 3 page dicussion that you should have read before submitting the exact same request, imo, because otherwise you're going to repeat it all over again, you may not have been able to use to tool linked anyway, sorry, actually there may be no way for your particular case.

So you agree, no such functionality exists, you're talking about an external script that does the job. Sadly that doesn't help when browsing the in-game mod portal.

Tags are supposed to be simplistic, so users can filter according to their preferences. When people make mods that add planets, they tick the planet tag. When someone made this mod https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AsteroidBelt he decided to tag it as a planet. Is it? Who knows. Someone will interpret it as planets only and won't tick that box when uploading such a mod, that's fine. If I filter out planet mods, and one every few pages makes it through, I don't care. I just ignore it. But if 90% of the search results are planet mods I stop looking for what I actually wanted to see, because that's really annoying and the search function isn't doing its job.
I just want to be able to filter mods according to this category. And I have enough trust in mod authors to properly tag their mods that having this category would help people to better filter for the mods they want to see.
And I really, really don't care about your conundrum on what exactly is AI. You'll just make that call yourself when uploading a mod, if Wube finally implements such a tag.

[mmmPI]

So you agree, no such functionality exists, you're talking about an external script that does the job. Sadly that doesn't help when browsing the in-game mod portal.

Not really the functionnality to blacklist authors or mods is something someone already worked for and can be used. I already presented my apology if the solutions that was presented in the exact same thread you opened a copy of doesn't suit your particular need. I linked it nonetheless because it's the exact same request, and because at the time i linked it, you had not mentionned you were specifically refering to the in-game mod portal, and since it appeared to have pleased the players that were expressing the same request as you, i thought you may have been able to use it for your needs.

Now that i think of it again, i think you are the one who should have presented apology for not using the research function and thank me for presenting a link that does what you asked for, then realize you were not precise in your wording and as such there was no way for me to understand you were refering to the in-game mod portal.

the search function isn't doing its job.

IKR that's the worst

[Tertius]

Can we please have an AI tag for mods? Looking through the recently updated mods list is becoming more difficult every day.

I don't see any relation between AI assisted mod creation and the ease of mod browsing in the mod portal. It's already at maximum difficulty to find mods with original ideas, because this would be a tag an author cannot supply.

In case you want to filter out AI slop, which is a valid reason, such an AI tag isn't the solution because you're unable to enforce the tag. So AI slop producers will simply not tag their mod. On the other hand, AI assisted software development is a huge contribution to productivity and quality. In case you don't let AI help you with coding, you're wasting time by doing everything yourself as in the old days of coding where it took a week what is now taking just 1-2 days. You don't want to filter such mods, because they're completely ordinary hand crafted mods where the author just used the best development tools available.

If it comes to the tag itself, look at all the existing tags. They all categorize the features of a mod, so if you're interested in a mod with some feature, you can filter the tag. However an AI tag doesn't tell about the feature of a mod. An AI tag doesn't tell anything about what a mod is about. An AI tag would be similar to a tag if a mod was created by a developer with a Computer Science study. With a diploma, for example. Will this tell anything about the content of the mod? Absolutely nothing. It's as useless as an AI tag. There could be a hope a CS tagged mod has higher coding quality, but history shows author education is largely irrelevant in the development of small software projects such as a game mod. The idea is important, not the nature of the coder.

Why you don't see a mod by me, for example, is not the lack of competence (I studied CS and have a diploma), it's the lack of ideas.

So if there is someone with a good idea and is able to craft a mod out of it, it's great. The tools used for this are irrelevant if the mod is great.

[radical_larry]

I don't see any relation between AI assisted mod creation and the ease of mod browsing in the mod portal.

I open the mod portal. I get presented tons of AI-generated mods. I want to filter them out, but there's no tag for it. That makes it difficult to look through the mods.

such an AI tag isn't the solution because you're unable to enforce the tag

That applies to all tags, yet they're clearly useful.

You don't want to filter such mods

I do though, but to each their own.

If it comes to the tag itself, look at all the existing tags. They all categorize the features of a mod, so if you're interested in a mod with some feature, you can filter the tag. However an AI tag doesn't tell about the feature of a mod. An AI tag doesn't tell anything about what a mod is about.

The space age tag doesn't tell me anything about the content of a mod either, but I can filter all mods by it. Neither does the no category tag, except that the mod author didn't select a different category.
An AI tag tells me the mod was made, in some capacity, with AI. That's all I want to know in that case, so that would be a great solution.

[mmmPI]

An AI tag tells me the mod was made, in some capacity, with AI.

No if i fork a mod and manually edit it because the license allow me and the author didn't specify wether or not they used AI , there is no way for me to tell and as such i wouldn't tag it, but then it could have still be made by an AI like all the images and animation, and the code and everything except for the dumb setting i added somewhere with my own hand like a champ.

[radical_larry]

No if i fork a mod and manually edit it because the license allow me and the author didn't specify wether or not they used AI , there is no way for me to tell and as such i wouldn't tag it

Ok great, I'm fine with that happening. I also doubt a lot of AI mods will ever see a fork, so if a few slip through, that's not an issue.

[Tertius]

I don't see any relation between AI assisted mod creation and the ease of mod browsing in the mod portal.

I open the mod portal. I get presented tons of AI-generated mods.

Then we have different mod portals. I open the mod portal, and I get presented a lot of mods. I don't see if any presented mod was AI-generated or not. How do you see this?

[radical_larry]

Then we have different mod portals. I open the mod portal, and I get presented a lot of mods. I don't see if any presented mod was AI-generated or not. How do you see this?

I count the rocket emojis in their description

[mmmPI]

Ok great, I'm fine with that happening. I also doubt a lot of AI mods will ever see a fork, so if a few slip through, that's not an issue.

You misundertood me, it's not just one isolated case, it's one where it's very obvious the tickbox is necessarily going to fail even if people try their best to please you and your particular vision of what the tag should concern.

There are also all the many more cases where people will just not care at all x) you have made a derogatory generalizing remark about the habits of people using AI saying they are really against the label, but then you propose they will have to decide to apply it onto themselves faithfully , for the sole purpose of pleasing people like you ? x) You were mocking the idea that the AI tag could be used for something else than "masking" the "AI-slop". Therefore it appears more than naive to me to expect "only a few slip through". Think about it, you write in here "ehh AI is shit people who do AI are against the label for good reason, i want a label to hide their shit" and then at the same time you expect them to use the label ? I'm curious to understand how it make sense for you.

I count the rocket emojis in their description

and how many means "AI made" ? i didn't know i had not put a single one.

Apart from the joke, this is very wrong imo, because many players that do not speak english will use AI only for the translation of their mods, or the description ...

[Kabury]

I'd like to ask for an AI icon/tag which is user-reported that shows up in the mod portal like this

08-03-2026, 15-47-33.png (97.65 KiB) Viewed 763 times

I've made a poll in which you can vote to decide where the field would be preferred.
https://rankedchoices.com/results#AITagPlacementON

I think the box with "AI" legend is a neutral presentation of the content, avoiding other decoratives that give it any connotation, so there's no endorsement or sanction from the mod portal towards mods with this content. .

I think this feature needs to go alongside blocking to be useful:
viewtopic.php?t=129751#top

To add to this, it seems 27% of polled mod portal users would make use this feature (poll done by protocol, details in link):
https://strawpoll.com/QrgewzNvOyp/results

[mmmPI]

I'd like to ask for an AI icon/tag which is user-reported that shows up in the mod portal like this

By user-reported you mean modders will have to apply it to themselves, or you expect any user to be able to "report" a mod that would contain obvious AI material ? "somehow"

I think this feature needs to go alongside blocking to be useful:

I ask for a block feature for the mod portal, that in addition to hiding that user's mods from your search, removes the ability of the blocked person from opening issues/threads in the discussion tab in your mods.

If self reported i think not only will (some/"the worst") people not label their own stuff with "AI" if they think it will lead to risk of being blocked/ignored, but they will actively use the block feature themselves to prevent anyone from making the remark that they should have used the "AI" tag on their mod if it works as you say

[Kabury]

I'd like to ask for an AI icon/tag which is user-reported that shows up in the mod portal like this

By user-reported you mean modders will have to apply it to themselves, or you expect any user to be able to "report" a mod that would contain obvious AI material ? "somehow"

I think this feature needs to go alongside blocking to be useful:

I ask for a block feature for the mod portal, that in addition to hiding that user's mods from your search, removes the ability of the blocked person from opening issues/threads in the discussion tab in your mods.

If self reported i think not only will (some/"the worst") people not label their own stuff with "AI" if they think it will lead to risk of being blocked/ignored, but they will actively use the block feature themselves to prevent anyone from making the remark that they should have used the "AI" tag on their mod if it works as you say

Yeah it's not ideal but it's the best we can have I think. I think the mod author should be the one placing the tag on their own mod (as with all other tags). If they block other people so other people can't comment it's AI and refuse to label their stuff as AI, I think it's better to leave it like that than to "report as AI" because inevitably some people will report stuff that isn't AI.

[mmmPI]

Yeah it's not ideal but it's the best we can have I think. I think the mod author should be the one placing the tag on their own mod (as with all other tags). If they block other people so other people can't comment it's AI and refuse to label their stuff as AI, I think it's better to leave it like that than to "report as AI" because inevitably some people will report stuff that isn't AI.

I understand your proposition isn't the worst can of worms , though i think it still is one or worse for a few reasons. I'm assuming your post may have been moved to this discussion due to the topic/request, and i see the poll is much older, it could very well have happened that someone voted on it and then went to open this discussion in the meantime There were couple topics like this opened on the forum.

Given your imo reasonnable assessment of the limitation of the proposition and the general presentation of your argument, i think i recognize you from discord, so i'm going to try a science based approach ^^

There is something unfortunate i see in the wording of the poll that asks : What's your reaction to a factorio mod having an AI generated thumbnail? and currently the most picked answer is : Dislike, but may still download it around 36 %, the second is Neutral / I don't care 34 %, and the last one is "Not downloading it at all" at around 29%.

The (recent) scientific litterature disagree with the assumption that human can correctly identify AI pictures by looking at them [ https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.22236 , https://link.springer.com/article/10.11 ... 25-00683-w], sure the context and types of pictures matters but what i take from this is that unless it's blatantly AI, people don't have a clue, it's the same for music, and for small snippets code currently, but in 5 years, it may very well be the case for a whole lot more things. AI won't get "worse" at making indistinguishible stuff from non-AI to human senses. They will develop and have already a way to make things that are "obviously AI" but they will be increasingly able to do both distinctively, i feel. The "deep-fake" direction, and the ""AI-art"" are different.

The poll has the merit to exist and materialize a concern, but a wording such as "when i think it is AI" would have been accurate.

29% is about the percentage of people who rely on paper for their password give or take, it's wrong and most of them know it, yet still do ^^ To me that would be like judging a book by its cover, or a mod by its thumbnail (only). Hopefully half of the time they are incorrect and would miss an AI image and still get to enjoy the good mod, but the other half they are comiting a mistake !

I'm not talking about the people who are "philosophically allergical to AI" as someone explained to me once, to me this is a lost battle, because there is no way to guarantee a perfect curated non-AI safe place AND with public/semi public submission without constant surveillance/monitoring ( the worst can of worms).

What i expect is a more moderate approach of " i don't want ugly mass dumped AI slop all the time", the "bad AI" , a system that discourage low quality stuff, but that doesn't mean the tag is appropriate for this purpose, consider someone who spend a lot of time coding or doing the assets, and using AI for the part they are unfamiliar with but spend so much time and effort that it doesn't look AI anymore, it's indistinguishible from non-AI, they label it as AI, because of their good ethics, only to learn 29 % people will straight ignore it ? When they would not have been able to tell otherwise ? Why would you label it ? If you spent 1000 hours making your mod, and 2 hours correcting some grammar for some tooltip with an AI or made sure it's not ambiguous , would you disclose it ? This is slippery if you are unfamiliar with code or modeling in 1000 hours you may not get very far and your mod would look like essentially a lot of AI-generated tooltip to someone else.

Fundamentally it would be the one tag that you use not to help people finding your mod but on the contrary, only a negative filter thought to make your mod less visible. In a context with monetization, the incentives to "not disclose" would be higher, when currently you can read it in the description of the mods, some write they use AI, for which parts, some write they didn't use AI, a "NO-AI" tag would be a different approach, where you would have to actively mislabel your mod instead for a "bad behavior". It's like the "home-made-meal" or the "cratman's work", that new label in a red circle you can see on youtube for people with strong opinions on the matter because seemingly the self applied label isn't enough, here you don't expect the "bad actors" to label themselves (that's irrealistic expectation imo), and you account for all the cases where people "dont know" if instead you make more visible the "good actor". It would then sound more legitimate to ask for a workflow explanations , and/or holding those using the no-AI tag more responsible for the mod using the tag, if there is a need for "monitoring" the curated content, it's not the whole mod portal, but only those mods. You don't comit a "lie by omission by default" if you don't know and allow like minded people to find themselves or mod that suit their request, which is more the purpose of the tag ^^

I don't think the AI tag is the best we can have, i can think of less problematic, but even then it's superficial and/or potentially misleading imo, i only agree that that there is no ideal solution to what appears to be to me a "taste" issue. Currently abuses are dealt with on a case per case basis, it's not ideal because it may cause devs a lot of work, but i imagine if a person behavior was out of bounds the devs would give a warning and explain before considering removing the mods or the authorization for the author to publish. If someone is particularly triggered and report everything, their report i imagine are ignored at the discretion of the devs. It appears better ^^