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this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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The problem, as you have rightly pointed out, is money. I'm going to assume from what you said that you are not a multi-billion dollar company. If you are, please disregard the rest of this comment..
When WotC and others like them use AI assets instead of hiring artists, it means that they have to give less money to working-class people to create their product, but they will still charge the same for it. This leads to even more money being siphoned from you and me into the pockets of giant corporations and their disgustingly rich owners.
(This is in part what the actors / writers were on strike about recently - not wanting AI generated content taking them out of a job and not giving credit)
As it stands in America (WotC's home) right now, people need money to be alive. It's a ridiculous way to run the world that you need to buy food and shelter, but that's not changing any time soon. This is why AI and other automation is such a problem.
When you use AI to help build your game, it is a regular person (you) who is benefitting, not a giant corporation. And as you said, without AI then your game is less likely to progress and no-one gets to experience the work and passion you put in.
Bonus thoughts: I'm all for taking away people's jobs and replacing them with a universal basic income, or doing away with money all together. Why should people need to spend 40+ hours working when a machine could do it better? Let people be free to pursue their passions and goals without needed to worry about where their next meal is from. All of these wonderful technologies that humans have created should be freeing us up. What we need is for our political and societal structure to catch up with our technology!
I agree with you, but then the question is : what is the threshold when it becomes not okay to use AI?
I agree that OP's use case is definitely a time where AI is beneficial. But if someone has, let'd say 10k in bank, is it acceptable then? 50k, 100k?
The real answer is it's not up to me to decide. But since we're talking hypothetical and it doesn't matter anyway...
My first thing would be that money is a concept that should no longer exist. It served humanity well as we progressed, but we have reached a point now where there are enough resources to go around if they were utilised and shared correctly, and money and the greed it causes is now holding us back. So I would prefer to just have your question be meaningless. There are plenty of people who would love to be artists but can't afford to stop working. There are plenty of people who would love to create products to use that art, but can't justify the financial risk. And there are also a lot of people who want to use generative AI in their project. There's enough room in the world for all of us.
And now to answer your real question: £10million. That's my threshold for "rich person" in general. It's enough money to be set for life and any more than that is greedy and other people or charities could use your money better than you.
I appreciate the thought and I agree with you. My question was open ended and not directed at you.
It would be nice indeed to go into the post scarcity society you describe where everyone can be whatever they want.
I guess my point was that it's a limit that society will eventually put in place, but it will be tumultuous before that.
It's the artists that WotC hire that choose to use ML generated content in their art, WotC themselves already had a "no ML art" policy long before this controversy.
WotC was more a jumping-off point for this discussion, since I was replying to someone who was talking about his own use of AI.
(But realistically, we've all seen how WotC behaves recently. Chances are this is a test to see if there's pushback before they go for it for real)