Paizo and Artificial Intelligence

As an author who's been writing for Paizo products for the past 8 years, I don't feel threatened by generative AI / large language models making me irrelevant. Quite the opposite, when used responsibly as a tool, it can be a huge productivity boost and increase the quality of writing.

I don't mean it would be a good idea to generate adventure plots or entire paragraphs of text and use it as if I'd written it, but rather, to use it e.g. to revise something I've personally written. Especially toward the end of a writing project, a lot of time goes into editing and cutting chunks of text to make everything fit. There's also a lot of boilerplate text and standard phrases used in rules text, and having the ability to get those automatically completed/corrected according to Paizo's writing guidelines would be amazing. I.e. reduce the tedious parts of the work so I can focus on the creative part.

Things like auto-completion, predictive text, and such are already pretty standard features in many writing tools. Those too are AI-based, so when adding new language to contracts, please define carefully what uses of AI are and aren't allowed.

I totally agree it's unethical and very probably will be illegal too to use copyrighted art to train an image model and generate images and use them as if that were your original art. But would it be ok if an artist used their own art to train/fine-tune a model and then use the output to speed up their own creative process?

All that said, I think there are valid reasons for taking this stance especially because "the ethical and legal circumstances surrounding these programs remains murky and undefined" as mentioned in the blog. But I want to point out that AI is not a monolith -- it takes many forms and has many use cases, and it really really depends on what you do with it whether it's ethical or not. It also doesn't have to be a scary thing (assuming laws prevent unethical uses). In the field of software engineering there's already a saying "Traditional developers won't be replaced by AI, but they will be replaced by developers who can use AI." I think that's how it will be for creatives as well.

Sidenote, considering that AI isn't really currently used in any commercial product as a tool because of the said questionable ethical and legal problems (including that currently you can't copyright stuff it produces), it would be really weird if any company was like "We shall embrace this thing that currently makes people worried about their livelihood"

I am very much against this for more than one reason.

We use technology in all aspects of our work life and home life so why should this technology be outlawed from publication by Paizo?

Say I am a great writer but I'm not a very good artist and I do not have the money for art. Should my adventure I wrote either not contain art or not be able to be published on Infinite because I choose to use AI to make art for it??

Say I am a great thinker and I can come up with great ideas but I can't actually write well and grammar and syntax skills elude me. Should my creation be outlawed because I used AI to help me formulate my writing correctly so it looked professional?

I get where Paizo is coming from as they are writers and artists.

I work in construction where technology leaps have caused millions of jobs to be lost but that technology is what has made us more efficient and capable to do more.

AI can be used in the same way and I hope Paizo sees that a blanket banning of projects that use AI is not the way to go.

There are stock art assets you can use, including several pieces of art from Paizo (including any piece of art used in a blog post like this one). Use that while you publish on Infinite, and if you get hired to freelance for Paizo, they'll supply art from their pool of artists.

Before the AI tools got rolled out, if you couldn't afford to hire an artist, you weren't allowed to go to Google images and just grab a bunch of art to put in your book to sell. That's clearly stealing, and it wasn't allowed.

After the AI tools got rolled out, you aren't being allowed to use the tools that grabbed a bunch of those copyrighted images without permission, credit, or compensation, and fed them into an algorithm while also using Paizo's world and platform. Selling something with AI-generated images is not as cut-and-dry a form of stealing, but it's definitely not as ethical as it should be, and it's still a legal quagmire.

If you use somebody's work directly, you aren't allowed to sell it. If you use somebody's work indirectly through an AI, Paizo won't let you sell your work through them.

If you can't draw, you can always still upload something without art. Yeah, that won't sell as well. Format it well, use legal free art resources with credit, invest money you do get into paying somebody to do art and update your work so it sells better. If your work is good enough, maybe you can find an artist who is willing to take a cut of the profit instead.

But, if the art is such a key part of your work selling well, artists deserve to be compensated for that. Undercutting work that does compensate artists with second-hand art used indirectly without permission isn't the way to go.

You can also choose to not sell your work, and just make it freely available through other channels. People aren't going to have as much of an issue with AI-generated elements if you're not profiting off it. You're valuing your own contributions and the unattributed artists the same.

Again there are hundreds if not thousands of pieces of art that Paizo lets you use for free with Infinite. Anything on a blog post is usable. Anything in the free packs on Infinite is usable. The images in the various community use packs are usable. If you can't afford an artist there are resources.

Here's a suggestion:

If you are just beginning your career as a (writer/artist) and can't afford to pay an (artist/writer) for their work, how about joining forces and promoting both of your skill sets together.

For all of you writers:
Would it be a good idea for an AI to be available to artists who want to sell their work to Paizo, but don't have the writing skills to match their art skills?

Is it OK for Paizo to say, "You're a great artist, so, sure, you can just plagiarize existing writers and that will be fine for our community. We can reject these human writers' submissions if your AI chatbot's output is adequate."

Awesome job, love to see it!

Again there are hundreds if not thousands of pieces of art that Paizo lets you use for free with Infinite. Anything on a blog post is usable. Anything in the free packs on Infinite is usable. The images in the various community use packs are usable. If you can't afford an artist there are resources.

Whoa, anything on a blog post? That's a lot more options than I thought there were.

Hoshi Sabi wrote:

This feels wrong. The truth is, "human generated" is kind of ... Airy.

Grammar checkers use AI, they help you find errors in your text, spellcheckers. At what point do we say "this is a step too far?"

I often used Chat-GPT as a way of bouncing ideas off of a "partner who listens" in a similar way that others have talked about "talking to a rubber ducky." Is that permitted, given that not a single bit of text that Chat-GPT generates is used, but it was part of the brainstorming process?

And the art, you do know that many of the professional tools that digital artists use employ AI. Maybe not the stable diffusion/midjourney tools that are getting press right now, but they do use AI. They're going to improve their tools constantly.

We're taking a stand to support "our fellow humans" but we're missing the point that the AI is a tool used by "fellow humans."

This feels similar to when gaming magazines would reject submissions from a word processor because they expected text written by "a human." If it's not a typewriter, how did they know that a computer didn't write it?

(and that's not some hyperbole, that is a thing that the gaming magazines did back in the day. Their adoption of Word Processors was definitely not a quick thing.)

Any lawyer will tell you that the boundary between a tool and the author is where the tool becomes the author. Which is exactly what we're seeing here. No, typing "elf chick big boobs sexeh rouge with swordz" into a prompt doesn't make you an author.

Isn't the gray area a guy making a rough sketch, inputting a description, and hitting the process button?

Cori Marie wrote:

Again there are hundreds if not thousands of pieces of art that Paizo lets you use for free with Infinite. Anything on a blog post is usable. Anything in the free packs on Infinite is usable. The images in the various community use packs are usable. If you can't afford an artist there are resources.

Whoa, anything on a blog post? That's a lot more options than I thought there were.

You may use any of the text or artwork published in the Paizo Blog or Web Fiction, with the following exceptions:.

You may not use excerpts of Planet Stories publications, Pathfinder Comics, and any logos and icons that aren't also in the Community Use Package.
You may not use any photographs published in the blog (because those rights are usually not ours to offer).
You may not use artwork, including maps, that have not been published in the blog, although you may create your own interpretations of material presented in our artwork and maps, provided that your interpretations don't look substantially similar to our materials.

Can I get a clarification on what this exactly means for pathfinder infinite products in a scenario like I describe below?

They design an adventure and it is 95% their own work, they design battlemaps in a tool like dungeondraft and write the story and stats themselves. Because they are not an artist and cannot afford to commision an artist, they use an AI image generator to generate an image of the town the adventure is set in, or maybe an important NPC's portrait. Maybe they also used a language model in the brainstorming process to come up with ideas, or get feedback. Everything not made by the person is referenced.

Every publisher on Infinite (or anywhere, I guess) does so under the honor system that they aren't plagiarizing others' words, using art they don't have the right to, or otherwise running afoul of the rules governing copyrights and (in this specific case) the terms of publishing on that marketplace. The hypothetical publisher may consider releasing their work under the Pathfinder Compatibility License instead of on Pathfinder Infinite in order to use AI-generated art free of these restrictions.

For those looking to get into publishing material on Infinite, you might check out some of the community-run resources to help people take those first steps into community content publishing, like r/pathfinderinfinite, the Infiknight discord, or DriveThru's own Discord where publishers can all help one another out, both for Infinite or more general publishing. There are also Infinite publishers who make and sell stock art for both Pathfinder and Starfinder that cost only a few dollars and give the purchaser the right to reuse that art in their own Infinite publications. Not to mention the hundreds of pieces of official Paizo artwork that Infinite publishers can use under the terms of the license.

There are lots of ways to get art made for your publications that both support real life artists, help build up the community, and don't rely on tools with currently questionable ethics.

Thank you for the bump, Mark! I help run the Infiknight discord where we have a slew of art and publishing resources available in our #links-and-resources tab, including a dropbox full of categorized Paizo artwork we scraped from the blog!

Thank you for this. It is appreciated.

Also, for those who don't have the funds to commission artwork for a product, there are lots of extremely good artists who put up stock art on sites like DriveThruRPG for relatively reasonable amounts. Earlier today I was looking at an artist, Dean Spencer, who has an enormous amount of amazing stock artwork for relatively reasonable prices. There are options.

Those of us who are both GMs and publishers will also commission artwork for our PCs and use that in our products; Just make sure your players are okay with it before you invest!

Also, for those who don't have the funds to commission artwork for a product, there are lots of extremely good artists who put up stock art on sites like DriveThruRPG for relatively reasonable amounts. Earlier today I was looking at an artist, Dean Spencer, who has an enormous amount of amazing stock artwork for relatively reasonable prices. There are options.

Tacking on, I cannot recommend Fat Goblin Games' stock art enough. They do excellent work at an extremely affordable price. If you don't have the art skills yet (I don't... yet), they are a bang-on option for PFI/SFI art that I will recommend any day of the week.

EDIT: And also worth mentioning that they do $1 sales fairly regularly. Where all their art is a buck.

I am enjoying learning about these resources, thank you FallenDabus and Cydeth.

To that end I started a thread with a list of stock art sources/ affordable stock artists here.. Maybe we can share knowledge here to empower artists, even just a little bit.

I like this stance. Chaosium and other publishers have also taken similar stances. I personally feel that AI generated art is perfectly fine for home use or other non-profit uses but should not, at the moment, be used for commercial purposes due to the murky waters surrounding copyright. As a freelance cartographer (and occasional author) I do use technology to aid my endeavours. I use CC3+ now for my maps and various word processors and Affinity Publisher for whatever I write and or publish. Yes, these tools do have some AI embedded in them to assist you, but the AI tools involved DO NOT CREATE stuff. A spelling/grammar checker checks what you have have written it does not write it for you and that's the key difference. As an example, CC3+ has an annual style that converts a randomly generated Watabou City map into something more visually appealing. I would have no qualms sharing anything I created using that for free but I would not sell it.

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

Hoshi Sabi wrote:

This feels wrong. The truth is, "human generated" is kind of ... Airy.

Grammar checkers use AI, they help you find errors in your text, spellcheckers. At what point do we say "this is a step too far?"

I often used Chat-GPT as a way of bouncing ideas off of a "partner who listens" in a similar way that others have talked about "talking to a rubber ducky." Is that permitted, given that not a single bit of text that Chat-GPT generates is used, but it was part of the brainstorming process?

And the art, you do know that many of the professional tools that digital artists use employ AI. Maybe not the stable diffusion/midjourney tools that are getting press right now, but they do use AI. They're going to improve their tools constantly.

We're taking a stand to support "our fellow humans" but we're missing the point that the AI is a tool used by "fellow humans."

This feels similar to when gaming magazines would reject submissions from a word processor because they expected text written by "a human." If it's not a typewriter, how did they know that a computer didn't write it?

(and that's not some hyperbole, that is a thing that the gaming magazines did back in the day. Their adoption of Word Processors was definitely not a quick thing.)

Any lawyer will tell you that the boundary between a tool and the author is where the tool becomes the author. Which is exactly what we're seeing here. No, typing "elf chick big boobs sexeh rouge with swordz" into a prompt doesn't make you an author.

Isn't the gray area a guy making a rough sketch, inputting a description, and hitting the process button?

There's always a grey area, but for this particular situation, it's irrelevant. The core underlying dynamic is that there's a segment of the fanbase that's excited about getting art that they won't have to pay for/will pay much less than for artist-made, and the pushback against that from people who realise how damaging it will be to the industry.

Couldn't agree more!

Also, for those who don't have the funds to commission artwork for a product, there are lots of extremely good artists who put up stock art on sites like DriveThruRPG for relatively reasonable amounts. Earlier today I was looking at an artist, Dean Spencer, who has an enormous amount of amazing stock artwork for relatively reasonable prices. There are options.

Excellent point, I feel like with options like this, and all of the artwork you can use via infinite products, there is plenty of material to make your products look appealing, without having to resort to AI tools

This is something that has been a long time coming, so congratulations to Paizo for taking a stand.

Paizo doesn't disappoint! Thank you for this.

On the one hand, these new tools drag the jobs of creatives into the same category as those of so many others: threatened to become obsolete by technology. That's... life.

On the other hand, most/all of these new tools are trained using existing material that wasn't licensed for the purpose, so it's likely almost anything produced by them infringes the original creator's rights. That's bad.

To me that makes Paizo's decision the right one for now. But unless we bomb ourselves back into a stone age, the future where a child asks their Alexa-like personal assistant "tell me a bed-time story nobody has heard before" and it does is coming. The list of jobs technology can't perform is steadily shrinking and while that sucks for every single person who loses their job to tech, it sucks for all of them equally - manufacturing, creative, whatever - and is realistically inevitable. Some day we may arrive at a state where everyone is unemployed and people pass days however they want... be that writing stories (creatives) or home woodworking (manufacturing) or bird-watching, but these are the days in between.

For now, while these tools are (probably) infringing, good call Paizo.

Thank you, Paizo, for this decision. As an artist (musician) who has spent years honing my craft, I appreciate your support of carbon-life-form-based artistic expression.

While I understand the stance taken by Paizo given its own business, it’s employees and backgrounds - I do think the statement seems to take too much of a “moral high ground”. I understand creatives are threatened by AI - and it is paizo’s prerogative to make choices for their own business. However in my opinion they should be more honest in owning up that is their business decision and focused on the self-interest of them and people like them.

Because people getting inspired and learning from the works of others is perfectly accepted in art - but if this happens via technology it is not. I understand it is a Luddite’s instinct to be afraid of technology - but claiming some high ground because of it seems strange.

Hoever as Mark Moreland explained there are other routes if people want to use AI - so I don’t think this a major issue - but it just feels like self-interest packaged in morality…..

Again there is a huge difference between taking inspiration from someone, and having a computer take various pieces of their art to make an original piece for you in their style. One is called an homage, the other is called plagiarism.

This feels like a good policy for now. People can still publish independently their own work using AI tools, if they wish, they just can't use Paizo's marketplace (or Paizo's IP that's granted under Infinite terms, etc). It doesn't say that OGL based content can't use those tools. (And I'd be surprised if the future ORC takes any such stance either -- as that feels like a publisher specific policy rather than a top-level license based one).

I also agree that the march of technology probably means it will need to be revisited, once more of the ethics/legalities are worked out. The time to revisit will come faster than some would liked, and slower than others; that's just the way of messy life.

Intent is what is important when it comes to the honor system.

I am 100% for the ban on AI generated art for commercial use. Personal opinion and one that just makes sense to me.

I am about 80% against the ban on using chat bots to generate ideas and stories. I applaud the stance that Paizo is taking, and fully support them for taking it. It makes sense to ban it for commercial use. Where does ownership lay?

For home use I have no issues with it. And even having a chat bot to bounce ideas off of so long as you aren't copying word for word I am ok with for commercial use too. Just an opinion.

It has been proven time and again that AI generated art, while epic, creepy, and inspiring? Can almost always be linked back to someone's original works being plagiarized/modified. Not cool.

I fully support the ban for official products and products that fall under Paizo licensing. This is their world and we just live in it. Abide by the rules and we all play happy.

Again there is a huge difference between taking inspiration from someone, and having a computer take various pieces of their art to make an original piece for you in their style. One is called an homage, the other is called plagiarism.

Yup. An artist spends years of their life immersing themselves in the artwork of others and in doing so contribute to that community as a patron, commenter, consumer, supporter, and peer. They visit museums, buy art books and supplies, attend classes, develop skills, build communities, provide advice and criticism, and in general exist in our society as a human. All of this is key both in developing new, meaningful experiences that lead to innovative art and to the more mercantile reality of engaging in commerce.

Currently, AI art is fed artwork without permission, consent, or critical thought over a short period of time, and used to churn out heaps of derivative pieces with no understanding about history, technique, or culture. It has its place as a tool, yes, but it cannot independently create meaningful art without that stream of stolen inputs. Stolen from a legal perspective, or stolen from the human sphere of experience and commerce, or simply morally.

If allowed to siphon not only the employment opportunities of artists, but also the intellectual property and joy of sharing, from the art world, AI artwork will inevitably crowd out real artists. Maybe not all artists, but enough that Art itself, possibly the most important part of human experience, will suffer for it. Eventually, if AI artwork supplants enough of our own talent, we will be reduced to a desert of endlessly cannibalizing mass produced derivative works, or suckling from the teat of a privileged few "real" artists who can still afford to make art to feed the AI machine.

Restricting something out of fear is never the right way to do something.

Can you quote me the "out of fear" part of the statement? Cause I'm just not seeing it.

It's always shocking to me how many people think that artists have had it too easy and that automating their source of income out of existence is somehow a step in the right direction. Like... are there roving gangs of artists wandering around harassing people or something?

Also, it should be really telling that the Venn diagram of people shilling for AI-'art' generators and the ones that shilled for NFTs is practically a circle.