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Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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Manor Lords and Terra Invicta publishers Hooded Horse are imposing a strict ban on generative AI assets in their games, with company co-founder Tim Bender describing it as an “ethics issue” and “a very frustrating thing to have to worry about”.

“I fucking hate gen AI art and it has made my life more difficult in many ways… suddenly it infests shit in a way it shouldn’t,” Bender told Kotaku in a recent interview. “It is now written into our contracts if we’re publishing the game, ‘no fucking AI assets.'” I assume that's not a verbatim quote, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

The publishers also take a dim view of using generative AI for “placeholder” work, or indeed any ‘non-final’ aspect of game development. “We’ve gotten to the point where we also talk to developers and we recommend they don’t use any gen AI anywhere in the process because some of them might otherwise think, ‘Okay, well, maybe what I’ll do is for this place, I’ll put it as a placeholder,’ right?” Bender went on.

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[–] 27 points 10 months ago

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    [+] 59 points 10 months ago* (16 children)
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  • [–] 43 points 10 months ago* (13 children)

    One way of looking at it is serving a vegan a vegan meal, after you slaughtered a cow for the first couple of tries. Some of the damage has already been done.

    Also, we've had several kerfuffles already where GenAI "placeholders" were present in a released game, and caused plenty of outrage. It's far safer to never have those placeholders to begin with. Just draw up something ugly in Paint, at least it'll be plenty obvious you need to fix it before launching the game.

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  • [+] 31 points 10 months ago (3 children)
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  • [+] -44 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    Omg. The damage has been done? Cows have been killed, because someone used an ai generated texture for mud.

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  • [–] 35 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    In order to generate that texture, AI bots have already been attacking every website hosting content on the internet for the past year, to the point that they were basically DDoSed and forced to take extreme measures to stay online. Plenty of copyrighted works have been slurped up without consent from their authors, a massive amount of energy has been used to inference the models and even more energy (far more than all cryptocurrencies combined for example) is used generating things from those models. So yes, a lot of damage has already been done. Far more than killing a couple of cows.

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  • [+] -43 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    That's bullshit exaggeration and you know it.

    Plus there are legally made models.

    Massive energy is used to give you porn, its the way it is. Humanity needs more and more energy all the time. Making that one thing you don't like the problem is not sensible.

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  • [–] 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    That's bullshit exaggeration and you know it.

    It is not a bullshit exaggeration.

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  • [–] -1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I heard an interesting statistic the other day. Golf courses use vastly more water than AI. Upwards of 30x more in some areas.

    AI usage only accounts for like 20% of water usage by data centers in general.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    The problem here is that you lose nuance.

    Yes, a lot of datacentres use evaporative cooling, meaning that the heat is taken away as the water evaporates. It's a cheap and effective way of doing things and the water returns to the water cycle and doesn't really get locked up anywhere. So it's not really a problem, right?

    Well yes, in a vacuum that's fantastic. However there's two caveats to this: evaporative cooling works best in arid areas, because the air can hold more water. Thus they build these AI datacentres in naturally arid areas. Smart, they're using physics to their advantage!

    What's the second problem then? They're now using up the ground water in those arid areas to cool their datacentres and thus ruining it for the people that live there, leaving them without safe water to drink.

    Also I don't know how many anti-AI people will be all "bUt gOlF CoUrSeS ArE OkAy, We lOvE ThOsE!!" These things exist purely for rich people that don't contribute anything, so we could get rid of both and the world would be a better place.

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    • [–] 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

    There's a problem in movies that I keep thinking about in relation to this.

    Movies often use music from other movies in early cuts to get something rough together. They time the scenes around the music, they work with it for ages, and finally it's time to make an original track to replace the rough copy.

    But they have to use something that's the same tempo, because of how the scenes were timed around the old music. And it has to fit in the same vibe, because that's what the old music felt like.

    So you end up with a piece of music that's usually pretty close to the temporary music, and a lot of Hollywood osts sound almost identical as a result. When I see people talk about using gen ai for placeholders and concept art, I see that same problem turning up.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I had never heard about temp tracks, but this makes so much sense. That's a powerful homogenizing force.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago

    Famously, Stanley Kubrick used classical music as a temporary track for 2001: A Space Odyssey, and intended on having Pink Floyd do the soundtrack. However, he grew to like how the classical music felt so much that he decided to keep it.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Same thing happens with games to some degree.

    There are many stories from gaming about placeholder music becoming integral part of the game.

    In original doom games Carmack and Romero loved Black Sabbath and listened it during testing amd working on the game. That led to now legendary doom ost.

    During the development of Max Payne 2 Remedy used Poets of the fall song as a placeholder and in the end they decited they wanted it in to the game, but because they could not get in to agreement with the publisher, and because PoF members are just cool guys, they eventually made song just for the game to get around the licensing debucle. That song was later released as a single.

    I remember hearing story about Brutal Legend having some licenced music as a place holder in meeting with investors and it lead that music ending in to the game.

    Im writing this while im little busy, so everything is coming from my memory, without fact checking, so who ever is reading this take it with a pinch of salt.

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    • [–] 25 points 10 months ago (18 children)

    I need to admit that in the past day, I asked an AI to write unit tests for a feature I’d just added. I didn’t trust it to write the feature, and I had to fix the tests afterwards, but it did save time.

    I really don’t see any usefulness or good intent in the art world though. Sooo much of those models has been put together through copyright theft of people’s work. Disney made a pretty good case against them, before deciding to team up for a shitty service feature.

    It’s sad Clair Obscur lost that indie award, but hopefully the game dev world can take that as a bit of a lesson.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    If you acknowledge the problem with theft from artists, do you not acknowledge there's a problem with theft from coders? Code intended to be fully open source with licenses requiring derivatives to be open source is now being served up for closed source uses at the press of a button with no acknowledgement.

    For what it's worth, I think AI would be much better in a post scarcity moneyless society, but so long as people need to be paid for their work I find it hard to use ethically. The time it might take individuals to do the things offloaded to AI might mean a company would need to hire an additional person if they were not using AI. If AI were not trained unethically then I'd view it as a productivity tool and so be it, but because it has stolen for its training data it's hard for me to view it as a neutral tool.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    If the models are in fact reading code that’s GPL licensed, I think that’s a fair concern. Lots of code on sites like Stack Overflow is shared with the default assumption that their rights are not protected (that varies for some coding sites). That’s helpful if the whole point is for people to copy paste those solutions into large enterprise apps, especially if there’s no feasible way to write it a different way.

    The main reason I don’t pursue that issue is that with so much public documentation, it becomes very hard to prove what was generated from code theft. I’ve worked with AI models that were able to make very functioning apps just off a project’s documentation, without even seeing examples.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    I don't think training on all public information is super ethical regardless, but to the extent that others may support it, I understand that SO may be seen as fair game. To my knowledge though, all the big AIs I'm aware of have been trained on GitHub regardless of any individual projects license.

    It's not about proving individual code theft, it's about recognizing the model itself is built from theft. Just because an AI image output might not resemble any preexisting piece of art doesn't mean it isn't based on theft. Can I ask what you used that was trained on just a projects documentation? Considering the amount of data usually needed for coherent output, I would be surprised if it did not need some additional data.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    The example I gave was more around "context" than "model" - data related to the question, not their learning history. I would ask the AI to design a system that interacts with XYZ, and it would be thoroughly confused and have no idea what to do. Then I would ask again, linking it to the project's documentation page, as well as granting it explicit access to fetch relevant webpages, and it would give a detailed response. That suggests to me it's only working off of the documentation.

    That said, AIs are not strictly honest, so I think you have a point that the original model training may have grabbed data like that at some point regardless. If most AI models don't track/cite the details on each source used for generation, be it artwork on Deviantart or licensed Github repos, I think it's fair to say any of those models should become legally liable; moreso if there's ways of demonstrating "copying-like" actions from the original.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    I recently used one "agentic 'AI'" to help writing unit tests. Was surprisingly productive with it; but also felt very dirty afterwards.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    Don't. I think it honestly has a place. Now that place is vastly different from what business bros think it is, but it does have a place. I think writing tests is a great reason, and it's a good double check. Writing documentation is good, and even writing some boilerplate code and models. The kicker is that you need to already be an engineer to use it, and to understand what it's doing. I would not trust it blindly, and I feel confident enough to catch it.

    It's another tool in our belt, it's fine to use it that way. Management is insane though if they think you'll 10x. Maybe 2x.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    I often use it in programming to either layout the unit testsor do something that's repetitive like create entities or DTOs from schemas. These tasks I can do myself easily but they're boring and I will also make mistakes. I always have to check every single line and need to correct things, plus have to write one or two detailed prompts to make sure that the correct pattern and style is followed. It saves me a lot of time, but always tries to do more than it should: if it writes tests it will try and run them, and then try and fix them, and then try to change my code which is annoying and I always cancel all of that.

    I find AI art and creative writing boring and I only really see these things as a tool to support being more efficient where applicable, and you also have to know what you're doing, just like using any other tool.

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  • [+] -11 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    I don't know what you mean, but as a designer I can imagine my work without ai anymore. I get the same response from everybody I know In my line of work.

    I don't get banning it. At most for the ethical prudes is limiting one self to the models that were legally trained. But I have no problem admitting I am not one of those.

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    I still haven’t seen anything neat from any models that were certified following only legally permitted content. That said, to my knowledge there’s very few of that variety.

    Training off of the work of current artists serves to starve them by negating the chance companies hire them on, and results in circumstances where AI trains off of other AIs, creating terrible work and a complete lack of innovation.

    People suggest a brilliant future where no one has to work and AI does everything, but current generations of executives are so cut-throat and greedy to maximize revenue at the top, that will never happen without extreme, rapid political and commercial reform.

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  • [+] -8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Artists have been always starving. The future is such that if you can't compete with ai , chose another profession where you can. That's not something I want, but the world is changing and people have to change with it. That's either with another profession or by voting in politicians that can redistribute the wealth back to them. There is no option where the progress stops , where the clock stops ticking.

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Many artists do starve, and many others succeed. Not sure what your point is, or why you want to shift the needle more in the former direction.

    AI can't compete with artists if they are not generating content to serve for the model. Even if the models could achieve consistent art, it would mean we get no new themes or ideas. People who would normally invent those new styles will start by repeating what's existing, and will be paid for that.

    Many nations provide grants for art, because they recognize it's a world that doesn't always generate immediate, quantifiable monetary return, but in the long run proves valuable. The base expectation is that companies recognize that value and uniqueness in fostered talent as well, rather than the immediacy of AI prompts giving them "good enough" visuals.

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  • [–] -5 points 10 months ago

    Artists are always starving is because that's how it's always been. I don't think it can be an argument for or against anything.

    I've worked with ai image generation professionally and I can say that they are not missing new ideas if people using them aren't. They are great for brainstorming new ideas. They can't make a design, but are a great tool speeding up the process.

    I love art. I go to galleries often. I don't think ai can do that and will never be able to. Not true art like capturing a moment in time with the original style of the artist and their life experience. I don't think ai is a threat to that.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    I saw an article about an artist who used AI just for overall composition, and who said that he couldn't compete if he didn't do this, because everyone in his field was doing it and it was significantly faster than what he used to do.

    I suspect that when people say things like "AI cannot possibly help field X be more efficient like it does in field Y," what they often really mean is, "I work in field Y and not field X."

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  • [–] -4 points 10 months ago

    He's right. You have to use the tools at your disposal. It's not only a matter of survival but also about streamlining your work process. Focusing on the main design decisions and letting the machine do at least some of the leg work when possible. It's more pleasant like that.

    I don't mind people hating on ai. Everybody can not use it as much as they want.

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    • [+] -8 points 10 months ago (3 children)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    I've seen games in store listings that were obviously AI slop copying their entire game, Manor Lords (which is awesome btw)

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    Honestly, asset flips or pure ai slop are often not something you would consider a 'real game'. They are closer to a scam than anything. And they certainly wouldn't be published by a reputable publisher. I think that's also what OP was referring to, a game that meets some minimal level of development and involvement.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    That just sounds as they aren't using it property or having way too high expectations of what it can do from all the hype around.

    GenAI can definitely help and accelerate your work, but when it is used sensibly. If you let it do most of the work, it will generate so much crap that you will not have capacity to review nor shape it to a desired state.

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    • 3 comments in c/gaming@lemmy.zip view that post
    [–] 15 points 10 months ago

    Regardless of your own personal opinion of generative AI, it's very apparent at this point that it is widely unpopular. Sure, there are some success stories here and there with AI like Arc Raiders and I can't argue against a game that is obviously extremely popular, but at the same time I've seen games drop off the face of the earth and get their reviews tanked as soon as it comes out they used generative AI. If anything I'd say Embark learned their lesson from their previous game, The Finals, to where they just didn't even try and hide it for Arc Raiders and I think that helped with their success. They didn't tell anyone about using AI for The Finals until it released and I feel like that's a big reason why it never took off. Went from over 200,000 players to less than 50,000 in the span of a month or two.

    I'd say it's more of an honesty problem. The games that are successful were known to have generative AI from the start while the ones getting a lot of flak are the ones that were trying to hide it. To be perfectly honest, I'm okay with you using generative AI to make your game. Personally I'd lose a significant amount of interest in your game if you did and I'd be pretty disappointed, but I'd have a hell of a lot more respect for you if you were upfront about it than the ones that try to hide it.

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    [–] 27 points 10 months ago

    “I fucking hate gen AI art and it has made my life more difficult in many ways… suddenly it infests shit in a way it shouldn’t,” Bender told Kotaku in a recent interview. “It is now written into our contracts if we’re publishing the game, ‘no fucking AI assets.'” I assume that's not a verbatim quote, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

    I like this guy.

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    [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    Also, fyi, Hooded Horse has a publisher sale on Steam right now.

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    2 comments in c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 13 points 10 months ago

    They also have a publisher sale this month on steam and have some really good games, highly suggest checking them out.

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    [–] 0 points 10 months ago

    Apparently, an unbearable pain and sorrow starts taking over my head, heart, or even mind with soul... whenever I even think about a moment I realize that something I focused on, in order to imagine and try realizing what idea the artist wanted to express, actually, had no human involved in it but void...

    This void is not the reason I dignify discovered, nor I will ever want to... this is not the reason I live... Art is between human to pass ideas and love through the universe, I trust...

    Thank you... dear Artists... from the very depths of my hear and soul... for you creating miracles... for believing in the infinitely ineffably magnificent... in purpose... in human... in art...

    The waves are coming clean...
    Crash your breach and roll the tide that dreams...
    The tide that dreams tomorrow...
    Carry on and cover me...
    The storm will come and it brings relief...
    ~ Devil's Eyes - Calisus

    ---

    - The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said. ~ Peter Drucker
    - The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard. ~ William Hazlitt
    - The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder. ~ Glenn Gould
    - The purpose of art is the fight for freedom. ~ Ai Weiwei
    - The purpose of art is to stop time. ~ Bob Dylan
    - The purpose of art is mystery. ~ Rene Magritte

    ---

    Sorry. Just paralyzed by the indescribable beauty of the cosmos. We'll get to work. ~ Daniel Suarez

    Related: Chinese room (...argument holds that a computer executing a program cannot have a mind, understanding, or consciousness, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave...)

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