Paizo and Artificial Intelligence

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.

I agree with this. I really like AI tech as a whole, but it is a big umbrella and "AI art" and "AI writing" are just parts of it. I've built my own machine and deep learning programs that use data/algorithms that are entirely mine (unrelated to art or writing), and it is fascinating. That said, I do have concerns with "AI art" using unlicensed training data (as well as some of the other issues brought up here). In the meantime, I understand and appreciate Paizo standing by their artists and writers while the ethics and legalities are worked out. I don't think this stance will be able to be around forever, but until the issues surrounding "AI art" and "AI writing" are resolved then I think it is a reasonable stance to take.

Removed posts for baiting, attacking others, or violating other guidelines. Discussion and debate are perfectly reasonable. Personal attacks are not.

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.

I mean, this is just what technology does? We have tossed countless professions and skilled crafts into a woodchipper for the sake of speed, convenience, and accessibility. we buy clothes made and furniture made by factories, not tailors and carpenters. individual fishermen and farmers are outcompeted a thousand times over by industrial practices, as we speak the transportation industry is waiting until self-driving cars are good enough that they can get rid of all their truckers and taxi drivers. It sucks but artists aren't special in that regard, sure ai may not be able to produce meaning or true art no matter how good it gets, but the reality is most of the market only cares about a pretty picture or a cool design, and asking the market not to go for the option that is free, faster, infinitely repeatable, and quickly approaching the same level of quality is a futile effort.

Paizo can do what they wish.

However, in the short term, I think it means I won't be releasing the (small) projects I was working on to Infinite. I can write, but I have zero artistic talent. The pool of available artwork for Infinite (especially Starfinder) is very small.

I got some estimates for just minimal original or stock art that would have been 3-4x what I expect to make off the entire thing, making the choice either no art or AI art.

So... not worth the effort at present, IMO. I'll write up just enough for my purposes, use it with my local group, and call it a day.

It's no big loss to the community in my case, but I wonder how many other people will be in the same boat where theirs would be a loss.

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

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.

I mean, this is just what technology does? We have tossed countless professions and skilled crafts into a woodchipper for the sake of speed, convenience, and accessibility. we buy clothes made and furniture made by factories, not tailors and carpenters. individual fishermen and farmers are outcompeted a thousand times over by industrial practices, as we speak the transportation industry is waiting until self-driving cars are good enough that they can get rid of all their truckers and taxi drivers. It sucks but artists aren't special in that regard, sure ai may not be able to produce meaning or true art no matter how good it gets, but the reality is most of the market only cares about a pretty picture or a cool design, and asking the market not to go for the option that is free, faster, infinitely repeatable, and quickly approaching the same level of quality is a futile effort.

Just because something does happen doesn't mean it should or has to happen. Technology doesn't do anything by itself, it is the applications we put it to that has effects on the world and society.

Those factories and industrial fishing methods have a very real cost, both on people and the environment. The self-driving cars are a damned nightmare. All of this while we still demand that the people displaced by this new technology still pay rent and buy food.

Shrugging your shoulders and simply thinking this is how the world works is naive. The world only works this way if the people who most benefit from it working this way manage to convince us that it does.

The word 'Luddite' has already been thrown around in this thread. Maybe it would behoove some folks to read up on the original Luddites.

I think AI generated art is in the same position as downloaded music was about 30 years ago, and for the exact same reason: lack of IP protection. Originally, downloading music was considered wrong in general because it was inevitably a form of piracy -- all legitimate music sales were via physical media. Nowadays, most music sales are via legitimate sales of downloads.

So I would humbly suggest that Paizo's current position should not be a permanent and unchangeable policy. Once protections are in place to protect the IP of the source material used by the AI and to establish that AI art generation tools can be made into tools of an artist rather than ways to bypass the creative process entirely, a revisit of that position may be in order. Of course, given the precedent that I cited, it is likely that the time for that revisit may still be years in the future.

So I would humbly suggest that Paizo's current position should not be a permanent and unchangeable policy. Once protections are in place to protect the IP of the source material used by the AI and to establish that AI art generation tools can be made into tools of an artist rather than ways to bypass the creative process entirely, a revisit of that position may be in order.

I'm pretty sure that's what they meant by "so long as the ethical and legal circumstances surrounding these programs remains murky and undefined, we are unwilling to associate our brands with the technology in any way."

I, for one, am looking forward to the day AI tools can ethically and transparently source their training data, and independent bodies are allowed access to verify compliance with robust intellectual property rules governing the technology's use. Right now, this wild west bullspit isn't going to cut it.

... In other words "Hey, there's no market for paintings anymore, so you should start making paint by numbers. Think of all the art you'll facilitate in making!"

Again the biggest problem is the actual theft of other's work. Until that is resolved there can't be an ethical path forward for AI art. Period.

Removed a couple more posts.

For those writers who need to pair up with an artist in order to publish your work, keep an eye on this thread

Affordable Stock Art

There are links to sites with free art, offered by your fellow creatives aspiring to become published artists.

ya know I think its time to post links commenting on the practical harm caused by ai shenanigans, in this case by people spamming so many ai written short stories to scifi magazine that they had to shut down submissions because they can't read them all and AI tools to find whether they are plagiarized kinda give both false negatives and positives which would be unfair to people who didn't use the ai :P

Also like... I kinda get feeling that people who say "wouldn't you rather use AI tool than actually paint or draw or use digital art tools" kinda... Feel like they don't understand the process of making art? It feels kinda disdainful of the process.

Again the biggest problem is the actual theft of other's work. Until that is resolved there can't be an ethical path forward for AI art. Period.

Quoted for truth and insight.

Robot fruit-pickers, robot packaging machines, robot car assembly devices... all put deserving, hard-working people out of jobs. The key difference is that they didn't do it by appropriating the property of those workers.

Not okay.

Even the day that people prefer to watch android football players (now, with no concussions and brain-damage!), we won't have this problem because creatives are the only people who (frequently) retain control over the fruits of their labour while simultaneously making it available.

If AI could create a starting point, without using other works as its own starting point, I'd have no problem with people using it to assist in their process. Or even using it to create a finished work. But since it has to be trained on existing work, I can't condone it for commercial use, just private.

Feel like they don't understand the process of making art? It feels kinda disdainful of the process.

This I found interesting.

I have a hopefully thought-provoking response. My counter to this is that perhaps it's worth considering the process of making independent of "making art".

I get it that you're not intentionally putting "making art" on a pedestal above mere "making", but you might be, accidentally.

I'm not... visually artistic. I'm a verbal creative. Anything visual is a blueprint to me. I grasp angles and lengths. Blueprints feel good to me while sketches and paintings feel insane. I don't see shading and curves the way painters and drawers do. I... can't.

But I do "see" things in my mind. I imagine scenes and people and places and events. I can describe them with my mouth. I can describe them in written word. I can couldn't describe my co-workers... or my wife to a police sketch-artist to save my life. But I could describe things I imagine.

So just a thought... I can't currently make what I imagine except the few bits that are blueprints. But... if you take the infringing problem out of AI visual art generation, you'd empower me to make. On my own.

Sure, sure, I could pay or just ask an artist, and verbally describe what I imagine. But... that denies the ability to iterate or refine. With an AI tool to illustrate what I imagine, I could make.

While you might differentiate between the process I describe and the process of making art, I submit that making using AI tools could be just as valid and creative and important and special as what people whose heads are wired a little different from mine have been doing for millennia.

Put another way, imagine a machine that can read the neurons in my head, and "draw" what I'm "seeing" in my head. My hands can't do it for me. So... would I be any less an artist were my imaginings brought to paper by that machine? What if it was Van Gogh hooked up to that, not me?

TLDR: maybe... just maybe... everyone is failing to understand what "the process" should be. 'Cuz some of us would like to be creative but don't currently have the tools to be creative the way you think we should.

If AI could create a starting point, without using other works as its own starting point, I'd have no problem with people using it to assist in their process. Or even using it to create a finished work. But since it has to be trained on existing work, I can't condone it for commercial use, just private.

Using copyrighted works to train models is problematic and I think the owners' consent should be a requirement in any commercial context, and the owners should receive compensation for this usage as well.

But when talking about any training data that's in the public domain or otherwise legal to use for training a particular model, I see no problem using AI as a tool, or a sparring partner. It's not like our human minds are creating only purely original content. Our minds are also trained with thousands of pages of books and thousands of hours of movies. When I create an NPC for Pathfinder, my starting point is what I know about the game and its campaign setting and rules, and also what I know about other fantasy works -- or the real world. It's quite impossible to start from a completely blank slate.

I say this as a writer: Everything humans create is more or less derivative. For the most part, what we call creativity is just combining and mutating existing ideas in ways that makes them appear new and original. Not saying that generative models work exactly the same as human minds, but just saying they're not quite so different as people may think.

Richard Lowe wrote:

MurderHobo#6226 wrote:

The pool of available artwork for Infinite (especially Starfinder) is very small.

If only there was tons of free art that people using Infinite had access to, or incredibly cheap stock art.... oh, wait.

If only I'd addressed that above... oh, wait.

I've read your full post that was partially quoted here three times, and I don't see where you addressed that.

I just recently released my first Infinite product, and it has art on at least every couple pages, and it's all Paizo art allowed for Infinite products. I had no shortage of options since any art ever posted to any Paizo blog falls under that.

Give it a shot. You'll be fine. Paizo has made it remarkably easy to still make cool stuff if you're not an artist.

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

CorvusMask wrote:

Also like... I kinda get feeling that people who say "wouldn't you rather use AI tool than actually paint or draw or use digital art tools" kinda... Feel like they don't understand the process of making art? It feels kinda disdainful of the process.

There's a reason these AI media generators appeal so much to the NFT crowd as well. They do not understand art as anything other than signifiers of monetary value and as such see no problem with devaluing every aspect of it outside of raw profits. All media is solely a product and they seek to maximize the creation of that product in an attempt to flood the market.

AI art appeals a lot to people who don’t like crypto stuff. Human-computer writing based off existing text is something writers have been interested in for a long time (look at the gnoetry project of the early aughts for example, or pre-computer look at erasure poetry which made new art based solely on removing words from other writing); these artists weren’t there to "flood a market." They were (and are) making art.

By the way while we can all agree things like factories and industrial agriculture are bad for many reasons, they also are why we are able to sit on these boards (hopefully) well-fed to argue about a tabletop game, instead of toiling in the fields.

Many people in this thread are speaking from a place of self-righteousness and with little nuance about complex global topics. I really don’t think the parallel you’re drawing between cryptobros, industrialization, and AI is accurate. Well, I guess the short of it is that many artists don’t feel the way you think they should about emerging tech.

None of this has any bearing on Paizo’s decision here. As I said above the thread is derailed from discussion of this particular policy.

Never said there wasn't some broader appeal.

Additionally, you're talking to a guy who works a blue-collar job and is savvy enough to know he is one bad medical emergency away from unemployment. I've watched people I care about get rendered redundant and then callously tossed aside by management. I see this stuff happening firsthand and don't want it to happen to artists because I have an iota of solidarity with them.

On top of all of this, I've got my ear to artist's spaces and the reports are grim. It is a flood, just because the water comes up to your knees instead of over your head doesn't stop it from being a flood. AI media is already choking out traditional, skilled artists and authors. The artists CorvusMask linked to details how Clarkesworld, once an avenue for aspiring authors to get works noticed, has been overwhelmed with terrible AI written short stories. This stuff has knock-on effects, AI media is already driving down the value of art and choking out artists.

It all has a huge bearing on Paizo's decision as one of their stated goal is to protect the artists and writers that helped them define their products and create an identity. Just because you feel disconnected and distant from the issues does not make them 'self-righteous' ranting about 'complex global topics'.

The effects of this are very real and harmful. When it comes to that, the answers are simple.

There is also one more thing I don't see people acknowledge:

Why the heck I would as customer buy stories written by AI when I can just instead use the AI create those stories for me to read?

Like, if I don't want to read "Author's written book" but "AI's written book", why not just cut the middleman? :P

As said, in the scenario where author uses AI to write book and then publishes it, what do I need the author for? What do they bring to the table? Creative use of prompt words? You know the old phrase "Ideas are cheap" that I hate? That phrase exists because people keep pitching one sentence story ideas to creators without doing any of hard work to even have summary of beginning, middle and end. If we enter the era where somebody can truly create finished product with one sentence story idea, then ideas truly become cheap.

(this is especially assuming a future where AI is advanced enough to not need much of editing to create story that makes sense)

Also point 2: In market where hypothetically everybody can create a work with single day's work, how the heck do you standout from others in sea of thousands of ai created products? What about when possibly every day has thousand new competitors and they are all written in similar style due to everyone using the same tool?

(some people see AI entertainment being "infinite entertainment", I kinda see it as "everything will become samey and I'll have more than lifetime worth of old now "retro classics" to go through so why bother)

MurderHobo#6226 wrote:

Richard Lowe wrote:

MurderHobo#6226 wrote:

The pool of available artwork for Infinite (especially Starfinder) is very small.

If only there was tons of free art that people using Infinite had access to, or incredibly cheap stock art.... oh, wait.

If only I'd addressed that above... oh, wait.

I've read your full post that was partially quoted here three times, and I don't see where you addressed that

It's literally quoted above. In my reply that you quoted.

If you do standard fantasy and even some subgenres, sure, there's plenty to choose from. And 3rd party stuff is there; Dean Spencer for one does great work.

But, if in Starfinder you wanted to do, say, a half dozen new Swarm creatures, some new gear, a short adventure, etc., you've got maybe 5 pieces to choose from. And nothing for the new critters. Which is great for finding a cover but not much else.

Could I create it without that? Sure. Is it worth the extra cost and effort to me (or likely anyone else)? No, for the reasons I cited above. Is that the end of the world? Nope.

Paizo announced a policy. I provided feedback. My situation may not match yours, and I'm ok with that.

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

On top of all of this, I've got my ear to artist's spaces and the reports are grim. It is a flood, just because the water comes up to your knees instead of over your head doesn't stop it from being a flood.

…

Just because you feel disconnected and distant from the issues does not make them 'self-righteous' ranting about 'complex global topics'.

I'm sure some are, but art makers are not monolithic. Also, complexity does not equal disconnection from a problem.

Take your own insights here, bud, I'm telling you a lot of the artists I keep an eye on are worried about AI media generation. The ones you listen to might not be but that doesn't change that there are a lot who are.

And you're also right that complexity does not equal disconnection but 'it's complex' is often used to shut down discussion of a problem as being beyond our mortal ken in some bizarre way when that is simply not the case. Indeed, that's certainly how you seemed to deploy the phrase earlier in this thread. The best way to deal with complexity is to sit down and talk it out and most importantly listen to those most affected.

This is some excessive measures. Yes I understand that none of the content that Paizo themselves make shall include AI-content but to bar others is overreach

Well - it is only the stuff under their brand (which includes infinite). You can still use other routes and include AI art - just not under the Pathfinder brand…. which is their prerogative.