The use of Generative AI (voices, art, etc) in the creation of projects

[OssieTheOstrich]

So recently the usage of generative AI in media has become a bit of a hot-topic if you will, and recently I started to wonder, would this site be one of those places which’ll ban the usage of it?

I’ll list two examples of recent projects using AI which received some controversy so there is a bit of background context.

The first example was about 13 days ago from YouTuber AustinMcConnell, who created a small trailer for a book he was doing based on the universe of a public domain superhero. People had a pretty bad reaction to it as the trailer itself used AI sprinkled in some places (the narration, some of the art though not all of it) alongside art commissioned for usage in the trailer. To address all the issues surrounding it he created a response video which is actually a really good insight into the process:



The second example, the more recent one, is a fanmade Blender animation by Eagan Tilghman of a stopmotion-esc Scooby-Doo and FNAF crossover which was actually really well made.


(edit: apparently the embed of this vid ain't working so here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J1tqAaVXo8)

People had a very positive response to it, until some started to point out that AI voices were used in the project (though the creator clarified later that Shaggy’s voice was from a commissioned VA and Scooby’s voice was done by himself)

Like Austin he made a response to this one, via Twitter, where he explains his reasons for using the AI voices. (funny thing is that the video by Austin was brought up in some of the conversations)

Twitter embeds are broken presumably due to Elon Musk’s doing so I’m using images of tweets instead






Now, I myself am using AI voices for some portion of Mario’s Rather Unusual Trilogy (the 2nd and 3rd entries only), since it was convenient and trying to find VA impressionists would’ve taken time away from the programming and art. And I really don’t know how to exactly pay anyone for a silly little Mario fangame that I will not make money from.

I don’t have anything else to say but I just want a civil dissucion on whether or not the usage of generative AI will be allowed or not on this site. (and before anyone does a joke about it, no, that MFGG April Fools update about making only generative AI games doesn’t count)

Reply

[VinnyVideo]

AI can mean lots of things. The ghosts chasing Pac-Man use a form of AI to find Pac-Man in the maze (or run from him when he's powered up). There's so many forms of AI baked into our day-to-day lives by now that it would be hard to "boycott" AI even if you tried (AutoComplete, grammar checkers, map apps, recommendation engines, and so forth).

Over the past year, the AI that's gotten the most attention has been generative AI - AI that uses neural networks or similar technologies to create content, whether it's text, images, audio, or video. Some of these things can be pretty interesting, but they also raise some sticky ethical issues. There's the fear that generative AI could displace human creativity, putting skilled artists out of work or flooding the Internet with low-quality content (and, ironically, potentially ruining the training sets of the next generation of AI tools!). There's also the issue that a lot of AI tools were trained on copyrighted material without the knowledge or consent of the original creators (in particular, small creators).

I can understand why you might use AI aids for getting voice acting for a fangame - you're not making money off these games, and since you're not making money from them, it's not really feasible to hire someone to do voice acting or to beg someone to do lots of free work for you.

I suspect it won't be long before MFGG starts getting actual submissions made with AI. I think graphics, sounds, or how-tos made solely with AI would probably be declined - all submissions must be your own work, and most AI-made assets I've seen would be hard to use in a typical Mario fangame. I'm sure there will be a lot of discussions in the future about where to draw the line with AI-made content - I've seen a lot of discussions about this topic on OpenGameArt, for example.

(And yes, Elon did break Twitter embeds - that's why we had to remove the MFGG Twitter plugin from the index page.)

Course clear! You got a card.

Reply