Kotaku’s Pre-Judging AI In Gaming Coverage Is Getting Very Dumb
from the dogma-isn't-journalism dept
I recognize that when we talk about AI generally, and specifically AI in the gaming industry, there are some people out there who will simply dogmatically insist that this technology doesn’t have a place in the industry and never will. This typically comes along with two chief concerns: concerns about artistic expression if AI is used in the creation process and industry jobs being lost as a result of its use. As I’ve said in previous posts, people aren’t merely allowed these opinions, but we should be glad they’re there. If we’re going to move into the next phase of AI use in gaming, we need people to challenge its use, point out its potential negative outcomes, an spur the discussion about what it means for the art that is these games.
But journalists, including opinion journalists, are supposed to have a higher standard for topics like this. And it’s with that in mind that I say the following: Kotaku’s writing on AI in gaming is dogmatic and annoying in that it pre-judges all uses of AI in gaming in the same way I described above.
Now, I generally like Kotaku and have been a reader of the site for many years. But the pre-judgment in these articles is getting cringey. Take this recent post by Zack Zwiezen about how depressing Steam Next Fest was this year because gaming companies are using AI as a tool in their games. Zack uses a tool that informs him if a game he’s looking at comes with an AI disclosure. And this brought him great displeasure.
When I opened the main hub page for Steam Next Fest earlier today, right after my email inbox was flooded by PR messages reminding me that the event had started, I was excited to go exploring. But as I did, I started running into numerous games that feature disclaimers from the devs confirming the use of generative AI tools for various parts of the game or its marketing.
I clicked on 16 different games featured on the Steam Next Fest main hub page, and 10 of them triggered my extension and warned me of generative AI disclaimers. Of course, this will vary from user to user, as many of the hub’s slots are algorithmically driven. Still, my reaction is: Yikes. And scanning the most popular demos, I continued to run into AI warnings, so it’s not just my algo serving up slop.
Note that Zack knows almost nothing more about these games prior to his negative reaction about it all. He does note that some of the disclosures either come from small studios that explain that they don’t have the resources otherwise to produce these games without AI, which is the exact point I’ve been making about lowering the barrier of entry into the industry, or that the use of AI was very small and reviewed and edited by humans before anything went in the game. But seriously… that’s it. And the use of AI’s mere existence has resulted in Steam Next Fest being “depressing.”
That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Unless you believe that every use of AI in gaming is bad, that is. And if that’s your stance, you’re going to spend a lot of time being upset, because this isn’t going to stop. These are tools and tools will be used in the industry.
This isn’t a one-writer problem at Kotaku, either. Rebekah Valentine recently wrote a piece about how Epic produced a video showing how some of the art in Fortnite is made. And, yes, there is some use of generative AI tools involved. From there, Valentine discusses whether editing out undesirable contributions from AI, or mistakes, was actually saving time in the creation process. Then she notes that she’s not an artist and would believe artists if they said it did in fact save time. Then she says maybe that doesn’t matter at all because AI isn’t perfect and humans don’t always catch mistakes before something makes it into a game.
But then she questions whether any of the above matters because gaming companies have laid people off.
Or maybe none of that matters. Maybe we’re content with touches of generative AI here and there if it “helps” developers. We shouldn’t refuse the conveniences of new technology, right? Maybe this is good for the artists. Sure. But this is coming just three months after Epic games laid off 1,000 people because its leadership couldn’t keep an eye on their own balance sheet. What that tells me, in aggregate, is that Epic Games needs fewer artists to make new content for the game faster, which inevitably is going to mean tighter deadlines and more mistakes. I am not naive enough to think that Epic Games, having laid off this many folks, is going to use generative AI to give the artists that remain more generous deadlines that will allow them to reach their creative potential or fully realize their original ideas or whatever. Epic Games is concerned, first and foremost, with making money. If its leadership thinks they have a tool in hand that will allow fewer people to spit out art that’s good enough faster, they will use it.
This tendency to couple layoffs in gaming companies with the use of AI is lazy. I have no doubt that some layoffs, or slowing hiring trends, have been a result of the use of AI in some companies, some of the time. And I also understand that the gaming industry has suffered from some serious layoff numbers in recent years.
But the macro story is actually that layoffs have slowed in the industry, not sped up. They appear to have peaked in 2024, with a downward trend since then. We’ll have to see how 2026 ends up looking, but I very much believe that these claims are being made due to some very high profile layoffs at major gaming companies this year. The story of Epic’s layoffs is far more complicated than them deciding to use AI. The reasons behind Microsoft’s steady drip of layoffs and studio closures over the past few years is all the more so. And, industry wide, it needs to be remembered that there was a furious spate of acquisitions and consolidation in the market during the pandemic era of 2020 and 2021. That itself came with the dual problem of gaming companies overextending and lying about future plans when the regulators came calling about some of these acquisitions.
I’m not asking anyone to like bad uses of AI in gaming. I’m not even asking anyone to like AI in gaming generally. But dogma has no place in journalism, nor the market. Bad use of AI will produce bad games and the market will respond. Judging any and all uses as bad before you know anything else about a game is not the job of a journalist. Blaming every layoff in the industry on AI is no different than blaming piracy for every lost sale.
In short, writing about how game makers are using a tool and just shouting “It’s bad!” at it is not journalism. It’s not even really opinion journalism. It’s just lazy.
Filed Under: ai, ai in video games, journalism, video games
Companies: kotaku
Comments on “Kotaku’s Pre-Judging AI In Gaming Coverage Is Getting Very Dumb”
Tim, at the risk of stating the obvious, there is only one data point for annual layoffs past 2024. Calling a single data point a “trend” is either statistically illiterate or intellectually dishonest.
The Wikipedia page you linked to also says
and then cites a Wired article titled AI Is Already Taking Jobs in the Video Game Industry, which says,
(links and formatting not included in paste)
And yes, that article is from 2024, which, as you acknowledge, had the highest number of layoffs in the past 4 years. Even if you’re right and layoffs have peaked (and again, you’re basing that conclusion on a single data point), it sure sounds like AI played a role in those 2024 layoffs — not the sole cause, no, but the people who were there say it was a factor. So what’s your argument here? We shouldn’t be upset about layoffs because that was two whole years ago and everything’s better now?
It kinda seems like you’re doing a motivated reasoning here. You want to downplay AI’s impact on jobs and the economy, so you grab the first chart you can find that looks like it supports your premise, without thinking too hard about the data or reading the accompanying text. And then you complain about how lazy and dogmatic everybody else is.
Anyway, I had to buy a new SSD last weekend and it cost twice what it would have a year ago. Hey, why are all these people so mad about AI, anyway? What a bunch of silly dumb McPromptisms.
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The author directly citing Wikipedia is pure intellectual bankruptcy.
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Are you a highschool teacher dropped into our time directly from the aughts?
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That’s about as meaningless as the bogus “trend” you pointed out. One might as well be mad about houses in 2008, fiber optic cables circa 2000, or tulips in the 1600s. It’s the hype that’s the problem, not the items themselves.
Speaking of hype, for all the hype about jobs, I don’t get the impression that people love working as much as the rhetoric would make one think. It’s ridiculous for people to still be working like 40 hours a week, thereby pissing away the “efficiency gains” of the last hundred years. Societally, we just haven’t agreed on a better way for people to get food and such; but, individually, a lot of people plan to stop working as soon as they figure they can.
If people who wanted to make games didn’t have to sell themselves out to corporations who’d then force them to do it in certain unpalatable ways, that’d be a good start.
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Fantastic comments from Thad to this piece, this one in particular standing out. Curious that the author chooses to ignore it but responds to others where easier canned responses will scan. Oh well, pay for that inflated RAM cost and nevermind the local datacenter spiking your water and electricity costs, it’s iNeViTaBlE, wagie.
Anyway, based takes on AI from Kotaku, hope they keep it up and the info spreads.
Shutup until you actually do journalism and talk to game developers.
Once again – generative AI, in particular video and image generation, is the most resource-intensive and energy hungry form of AI.
There is a strong argument to be made that this makes it morally reprehensible to use it given the current environmental situation of the entire planet.
Against that backdrop? I’m kind of okay with games that used it, even minimally, getting flak for doing so.
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It’s also financially unsustainable. When the companies providing it switch from massively subsidising it to the point where they are reporting losses in the tens of billions annually, and instead implement token-based billing so it can break even, suddenly a subscription that a business could afford for each of their employees, now costs the equivalent of an additional employee’s salary per user.
Re: So....
The environmental argument, alongside the current spike in component prices and lack of availability, is perhaps the best argument against all AI use in gaming I’ve heard to date. It’s not the most prevalent argument, but I think it’s the best.
But in that case, the goal should be to lower the environmental impacts of the use of AI, not to argue that it shouldn’t be used entirely.
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In fairness – game companies can’t lower the environmental impact, and AI companies aren’t trying to. You can only change what you control, amd game companies can only control their use.
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“Best”? It has some initial appeal, but so far I don’t see it standing up to scrutiny. A data center has a large impact in one place, but the numbers I’ve seen suggest the overall impact of Earch’s data centers is not huge.
Laying off some game developers would free them from having to drive to work and fly to gaming conferences, and if we’re gonna optimize just for environmental impact, maybe we should try to accelerate that.
People who dislike pseudo-intelligent systems seem to like the environmental talking point, even if they don’t otherwise do much to help the environment. Like, they want to stop the data centers now, but demand a couple more decades of societal-infrastructural improvements before they’ll even consider giving up their fuel-burning vehicles.
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No one raindrop believes it is responsible for the flood.
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Okay, but every time you get in a car (or a train), activate a climate control device, buy meat or vegetables, or simply exhale, that’s a “drop” or several. And already Epic_Null is jumping in to prove the point: not gonna give up the car; the environment’s not that important. Well, maybe some people, in order to eat, have to prompt a computer to draw art on behalf of their employer.
Assigning numbers to activities like this help us determine what to prioritize. To use the “flood” analogy, should we fix Grandma’s dripping showerhead, install water meters in residences that lack them, do something about almond farming, or stop human procreation altogether (as has been seriously proposed)?
Shutting down all data centers—even the useful ones, like those running Techdirt’s servers—would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 1%. By contrast, if you successfully advocated to end tourism, it’d probably be at least a 2-3% reduction. And transportation is like 15%, so even getting rid of just unnecessary fuel-burning car use could be a more sensible goal.
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Make it practical for me to maintain my two bedroom apartment and food on the table without driving three (I have WFH two days) days a week and we can talk about me giving up the car.
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Generative AI is a morally reprehensible means to achieve morally reprehensible ends.
Repeat After Me…
Repeat after me: AI is a tool. Just like any other tool, it can be used, misused, and abused.
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Okay, well, let me know if you find a store that will accept platitudes in exchange for some fuckin’ RAM.
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“Why are gamers so irrationally angry at AI? And on a completely unrelated topic, why is the Steam Machine so expensive? Why won’t anyone listen to my many articles telling them how dumb they are?”
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Seriously, Valve has been laying the ground work for this machine for YEARS, learning a lot along the way, but now they can’t even budget properly because AI has allowed RAM producers to become a goddamn cartel!
If there is misdirected anger here, it’s because there is a TON of anger that only an expert can properly work through it, and only through actual accountability we are not seeing could it remain directed where it belongs.
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That’s because the AI tool is currently being abused.
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Our impression of tools is higly influenced by survivorship bias. Many dangerous tools have been banned, pulled from shelves by the manufacturer, restricted to experts, or even abandoned due to their nature. We just don’t think about them due to their absence in our lives.
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A knife can easily be used to stab someone. It is harder to stab 100 people.
A gun can easily be used to mow down people.
The easiest path is the worst, an AI makes that faster and easier to take than anything else.
Generative tools are unethical
The generative models (LLMm, diffusion etc.) from the big tech companies were created unethically (mass copyright theft, abusive exploitation of third-world labor for tagging), and their primary intent is to hurt worker power while consolidating more power in the hands of Big Tech. In that light, whether they are “effective” at any particular task is irrelevant. Using them, even just a little, is morally wrong.
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That is, LLMs, not “LLMm” /facepalm
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While I have zero information on “exploitative tagging”, your comment about “mass copyright theft” is intriguing.
What is your theory in this regard? And how do you get around the fair use standard?
How is an AI reading a book (or etc) qualitatively different from a human doing so?
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The copyright violation occurred when they obtained a copy of the book which was not was not licensed by the copyright holder. Whether they afterwards fed the book to a computer program, read it themselves, or used it as an offering in a demonic summoning ritual is legally irrelevant.
As for the qualitative difference, there isn’t one. Which is the point. If I download a book to read, it’s a clearcut copyright violation. If they do it to feed to a computer program so they can sell a language generating computer, it’s also a copyright violation.
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Because machines aren’t people. Hope that helps.
AI Use Is Inherently Harmful
There is a reason that folks are outright against AI: Use of AI disincentivizes creative pursuits. Anecdotally, I’m an artist and I make art for people to use in their games. Recently, AI artists have been flooding storefronts with a torrent of new products of dubious quality. Even with lower-quality work, more AI products = more visibility = more clicks + purchases = less for human artists. Luckily, as an established seller, I’m doing okay. What about the next generation? It’s not so easy to break through the flood of AI products with original work if you’re just starting out. Who will want to hone their craft and become a professional artist in the future if this trend continues? If it’s harder to earn from it, who will have the means to become an artist? The same is true of other creative disciplines including writing, composing, programming, and more. It’s setting up future generations for a much more dismal life with less opportunity, where skill is locked behind a billionaire-controlled paywall. That is why people are angry.
Of course, that’s just on the art side of things, and we didn’t even touch on how the models are trained on artists’ work without their consent, which makes them inherently unethical. There are plenty of other reasons to dislike AI- Here’s a small sampler of horror stories which are pretty much routine lately.
So… Yeah. Go ahead and complain about a couple random Kotaku journalists’ takes. Feel free to cherry-pick and ignore the big picture. It’s not “just a tool,” they’ve stolen our art and songs and books and movies and more, and are selling it back to us. It’s not just for fun. No fun is worth what’s being unleashed. It’s a real threat on every front, and the consequences are heaped on creators, the environment, and our kids.
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A year ago it was just me and some other lady bitching about the AI support from techdirt. Now instead of leaving my own “as an artist…” comment, you’ve come and done it for me. Im still waiting for Tim or Mike to address the environmental impact of AI, but they don’t.
Thank you.
Could have removed “Pre-Judging AI In Gaming Coverage” and “Getting” from the title of this article and it would have still been true. Kotaku is literally one of the worst journalism outlets to ever exist. Spiteful, meandering, childish, and just not interesting or informative. Also one of the original springboards of GamerGate.
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“springboard” is a funny way to spell “target”.
I’m gonna have Claude vibe-code me a plug-in to filter Timothy Geigner articles out of my RSS feed
I am a hobbyist, amatuer developer that’s been stuck on their first project for three years for various reasons, which by itself if there was any cash flow, business loans or full-time work involved would have meant I should have walked away ages ago because the project scope could have been completed in 9-12 months by one or two experienced developers.
I don’t have any pity for other independent developers cheating on ‘monotonous UI or environmental design’ using generative AI trained off massive theft, and not using it will bump up sales and attention to my product in the end even from people who may not have liked the subject matter or game mechanics type otherwise.
Meanwhile I have no qualms about just pirating anything that does use it in case it somehow generates artistic and quality merit from doing so (spoilers: it never fucking does and some developers I have caught having the same fucking character across different projects and games as a direct result of using similar prompts and art style names)
Meanwhile, use of generative AI both by developers and the masses is driving up permanent inflationary spikes on hardware prices.
At some point it’s not about good faith long term debate and eventually wondering when the anti-tech stochastic terrorism starts over it, or the hobby is finally mostly killed outright because even bad or free indie games been priced exclusively at the millionaire level.
Three things.
A while ago, Bungie, the developer of the game Marathon, was accused of plagiarism by an artist named ANTIREAL.
It was resolved, but let me tell a story, which I don’t know if true, but seems plausible.
Artists, working on a game, used generative AI for brainstorming. They got plagiarized images, since this is the only thing they can get. They created their own images based on the plagiarized images, and never thought to question where their images came from and how similar they are to to other artists’ work.
Is it fine for people to be angry at commercial users of the plagiarism machines?
What? They’re perfectly entitled to their opinion, and said opinion isn’t a “lower standard”. Posting this on Techdirt of all places is particularly wild, given the site is built on precisely this type of opinion journalism.
That is literally what you’re asking for. To the point where you don’t go an article without either calling people silly/dogmatic for not liking it, or gloating about how upset they’ll constantly be.
Nothing says pent up induced demand for productivity increases quite like industry wide layoffs.
I’m not sure lazy is the word I’d use for all the CEOs publicly masturbating about how that’s exactly how they want to use the tech.
Well, if it’s bad journalism, the vaunted market will respond, so you have nothing to worry about. In the meantime, if that’s your stance, you’re going to spend a lot of time being upset, because this isn’t going to stop anytime soon.
Re: Nope....
“That is literally what you’re asking for. To the point where you don’t go an article without either calling people silly/dogmatic for not liking it, or gloating about how upset they’ll constantly be.”
I don’t know how you could possibly get that from what I wrote. I’m asking for journalists to do more than shout “it’s all bad” at the topic. Both of the Kotaku articles I references, and many more on the topic of AI, are essentially that. And it sucks.
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What’s “good” about generative AI in the first place? It’s environmentally damaging, it’s laziness disguised as “creativity”, and it’s primarily designed to let the wealthy access skill while preventing the skilled from accessing wealth. When all the major AI companies are going “we’ve come to take your jobs and we don’t really care what happens to you after you’re out of work”—and I don’t recall any major AI company talk about pushing for Universal Basic Income or something similar—whatever “good” could potentially come from generative AI doesn’t outweigh, or even counterbalance, the many harms that genAI is causing and will cause in the future.
That line kind of feels like you’re asking from “view from nowhere” reporting on genAI, which…well, all things considered, would be ironic for someone who writes for this site. And please note that I’m not saying all AI reporting has to have a massively negative, “fuck all of this
and kill all the AI C-suite bozos too”–level slant. But if a writer/outlet has a negative view of AI that is backed by reasonable concerns about the technology and its impact on society, and the writer/outlet isn’t about purely reporting the news, for what reason should that writer/outlet act like they don’t hold that negative view?Re: Re: Re:
That’s really a criticism of capitalism in general, and I think it’d be better to be explicit about that and not focus so much on the latest thing. Capital-holders were always coming for “your jobs”, which is kind of what the Luddites noticed 200 years ago.
It’s happened via industrial machines, “management consultants”, outsourcing—and, yes, electronic computers, but that’s been going on for a century; few humans have the job title of “computer” these days. I’d rather let the rich fuck around with their computers while talking more seriously about basic income. And how about we stop supporting their behavior when we find it offensive, instead of just complaining while we fork over our cash or agree to work for them on the (bullshit) basis that “there’s no alternative”?
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In several ways, genAI is the endgame of late-stage capitalism. As I said, it’s a tool for the wealthy to access skill (in this case, artistic/creative skill) while blocking the skilled (i.e., artists) from being able to access wealth. What better way to summarize capitalism than having the capitalists tell everyone else “we wouldn’t pay you and interact with you if we didn’t have to, so we’re making a thing that helps us not have to pay you and interact with you, and we don’t care what happens to you because we’re going to be wealthier than that limp-dick ‘God’ everyone keeps going on about”.
And in case you bought into the propaganda: The Luddites weren’t opposed to technology per se, but were opposed to exactly the kind of situation that genAI evangelists are trying to create by way of destroying people’s jobs and replacing them with genAI.
Except—and this is a key point of my criticism of genAI companies—NONE OF THEM ARE DOING THAT. If they talked about UBI in the same breath they used to proclaim that genAI would destroy the labor market, I’d be…slightly less angry about it. But none of the major companies are talking about or pushing for UBI in any serious way. None of those companies are talking about what a post-genAI future, where genAI (or any AI, really) has taken tens of thousands of jobs off the table and left people to their own devices. That’s a big reason I don’t like genAI: The evangelists for it, including the companies making it, don’t seem to give a shit about what happens after their “revolution” so long as they make their money.
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True, and worth saying explicitly. Unfortunately, they never had any effective response to it—perhaps because they failed to realize what you realized, that capitalism has a natural tendency to lead to this outcome. It’s exceptionally difficult to remain capitalist, as they did, while avoiding such negative outcomes in the long term. That’s why capitalism has been called “the worst economic system (except for all the others we’ve tried)”.
People are, for example, quite willing to buy cars made by robots. Okay, partially made by robots, but that part’s been increasing. While a person might feel good about buying a car from a unionized American company, that company’s gonna be as capitalist as they can get away with, like by using foreign components and having a token American assemble them. There’s always a loophole.
So I’m always wary of arguments that this or that is gonna destroy the status quo. I think we’re eventually gonna have to depart from the status quo anyway.
Sorry, that was poorly worded. I meant let them fuck around in a fantasy world while the rest of us do some shit that actually matters. We give them too much deference. Like when someone makes music “for fun” but jumps when some rich person comes by with a record deal.
Re: Re: Re: You've got it nearly right....
“But if a writer/outlet has a negative view of AI that is backed by reasonable concerns about the technology and its impact on society, and the writer/outlet isn’t about purely reporting the news, for what reason should that writer/outlet act like they don’t hold that negative view?”
This post is, at it’s most basic level, about how Kotaku specifically is missing your “backed by reasonable concerns” part in the articles I referenced.
Yeesh, I didn’t think this was this hard to understand. I opened this piece up by stating that dissenting opinions aren’t bad and are necessary.
I didn’t realize I’d hate seeing a straw effigy of myself this badly….
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Hey now, there’s no need to be this silly about it…
But more to the point: Does Kotaku need to reiterate the already well-known criticisms of genAI in every article about it? Like, if they’ve gone a while without mentioning AI and need to catch people up or something, I could understand that. And if there’s some new criticism that isn’t widely known but absolutely pertinent to gaming, I could see the need to explain that angle. But when the criticisms are already well-known to the kind of people who would be reading Kotaku, do the writers really need to explain those criticisms every time they talk about AI?
I dunno, man, it just seems odd that I see articles about people proclaiming “AI is the future, AI is going to change the world for the better” and none of the evangelists have ever had to justify their hype beyond “trust us bro”, but every critic of the technology has to practically write a dissertation from a neutral POV with no emotional weight whatsoever and fifty different (properly formatted) citations every time they criticize AI to not be considered “silly”. Criticizing Donald Trump doesn’t get treated this way, and that motherfucker would arrest people for doing that if he could.
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“But more to the point: Does Kotaku need to reiterate the already well-known criticisms of genAI in every article about it? Like, if they’ve gone a while without mentioning AI and need to catch people up or something, I could understand that. And if there’s some new criticism that isn’t widely known but absolutely pertinent to gaming, I could see the need to explain that angle. But when the criticisms are already well-known to the kind of people who would be reading Kotaku, do the writers really need to explain those criticisms every time they talk about AI?”
If Kotaku would like to publish their manifesto on why all AI in gaming is bad all the time, they are free to do so and that would alleviate the need to actually make cogent points in their articles. They haven’t.
“I dunno, man, it just seems odd that I see articles about people proclaiming “AI is the future, AI is going to change the world for the better” and none of the evangelists have ever had to justify their hype beyond “trust us bro””
We criticize those idiots here ALL THE TIME. Jesus oblong Christ, the selective memory at work here is astounding….
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On a whole, it feels like Techdirt gives them more leeway to prove their hype is real than it does to critics of AI and its evangelists who keep bringing up valid (and real) harms done by AI companies. As compared to the concerns of AI critics, when’s the last time Techdirt near-completely brushed off the hype of an AI evangelist as “silly”?
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“trust us bro” is more justification than you provided in this article.
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You sound like a crypto bro from five years ago, demanding people ignore all the issues and say nice things about Web3, Blockchain and NFTs.
When AI companies begin to try to tackle some of the issues with AI, then maybe people will give it the level of charity you think it deserves, but they are doing nothing but paying lipservice to that while the planet burns, and people are rightfully pissed.
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You give the industry where they bypass local regulations to use illegal gas generators too little credit for their efforts.
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If you squint real hard and make shit up perhaps. When the whole argument is “it’s bad because AI!” it’s dogmatic. A real argument/opinion is “it’s bad because of these actual reasons”. Making arguments that are based on dogmatic assumptions and feelz are just plain stupid, like “Oh, this game has an AI tag therefore it must be disliked” without even bothering to understand how AI was used in the product.
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The thing is, these reasons have been given. Some people just disagree with those reasons, so they don’t qualify as “actual” reasons. When people say “it’s bad because AI!”, there is always a reason behind that.
For many complaints (e.g. artistic expression if AI is used in the creation process), you don’t need to see how it’s actually used in the product. It’s not an issue of being dogmatic, just that the criticism is not dependent on the quality of the output. If someone thinks AI is soulless, a good final product is still soulless.
You only need to see the final product if you’re agnostic about AI and only care about the quality of the output. Not all complaints are like that, and that doesn’t make it dogmatic. It’s just weighing it on a different axis than what you happen to care about. The ironic part is, I actually fall into this camp with Tim; the difference is I don’t just dismiss anyone who cares about different things than I do. Ironically, declaring only criticisms that are dependent on the quality of the product as valid is itself… dogmatic.
And that’s not getting into concerns around normalization. We’ve seen this happen with other industry practices like microtransactions. In theory, the bad ones get weeded out. In practice, the end result was the crappy practice proliferated. We’ve done this song and dance before, the magical market does not handle all forms of enshittification.
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Where? Not in the articles mentioned.
See, now you are actually making qualifications proving my point – which what journalists should fucking do.
But that is not what was said, in this instance it was “AI bad!” and nothing else which is dogmatic.
Is it? So dogmatic generalizations with zero nuance is totally fine? That way lays stupidity.
Who declared that? You? Someone else? Ironically, what do you call those who declare a product bad with the sole reason “AI bad”? Not dogmatic? Dogmatic adjacent?
Hey, it’s easy – just vote with your wallet! Oh, you really wanted to play that game even though it has MT’s so you bought it anyways. Well shit, guess what, that is how consumers encourages enshittification.
Gamers are by and large incredible hypocrites, they wail and curse that they will never buy X because of Y but just weeks later they fork over their money for it anyways because of FOMO.
You're swimming against the tide here
Whether AI is good or bad, legal or illegal, helpful or unhelpful, morally acceptable or not, is beside the point.
If people (including journalists) perceive that they don’t want it, then games developers will have to react.
We’ve seen similar in the Board Game world where companies are advertising “AI-free” as a positive marketing tool. I’ve seen it in youtube thumbnails, and if companies want to boost sales (or prevent lost sales) they will need to do the same with video games.
It’s like GM crops. Despite evidence that they were safe, the public, at least here in Europe, decided that they didn’t want them. So a company advertising their product as GMO-free had a competative advantage over those who didn’t.
Similar situation with NFTs in gaming – the market decided it didn’t want them, and games that included them were percieved as toxic and avoided.
Whether the decision is rational or not, many people have decided that they don’t want to buy products made with AI.
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AI apologia
Well I generally like Techdirt but this sort of AI apologia is getting annoying. There is no such thing as ethical LLM use. That’s not dogma, that’s a well-researched and reasoned position. If a game (or any other human endeavor) uses LLMs I am going to judge it on that fact. Pre-judge it. It’s already got a big negative attached to it. That’s how this works.
Yes, why would we prejudge a game to be worse when it was made with a tool prominently known for producing worse results?
By grabthar’s hammer what a mystery.
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you missed the boat
at what point do you realize that your AI zealotry is an extreme viewpoint? Plenty of people are okay with AI in situations, and not all of those have to be unquestionable.
I do not want AI in my gaming because it reduces quality significantly at a benefit to <things not said because it’s post ipso facto> does not mean “I hate all uses for AI”.
Developers don’t want it because it isn’t good and doesn’t help them make good things. It’s also taking their jobs, bonuses, etc.
Gamers don’t want it because it’s taking hardware, and destroying the home pc industry.
Stop trying to talk about subjects you are completely ignorant of, of the actual issues those in the space have.
Re:
If Tim stopped talking about subjects he was completely ignorant of, we wouldn’t have any more posts from him here.
…You have a point, I like your idea.
Huh. I’m losing all respect for “journalists” at record fucking pace, these days.
I’m not asking anyone to like bad uses of AI in gaming. I’m not even asking anyone to like AI in gaming generally.
Several paragraphs above:
That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Unless you believe that every use of AI in gaming is bad, that is. And if that’s your stance, you’re going to spend a lot of time being upset, because this isn’t going to stop. These are tools and tools will be used in the industry.
Admittedly telling people to suck it up and deal isn’t telling them to be happy that AI is being crammed everywhere an exec can manage it, but it’s not exactly better either nor more likely to convince people to jump on board the AI train.
(As an aside it occurs to me that ‘like it or not this is how it’s going to work from now on so learn to deal with it’ could be and almost certainly was used to defend/justify the likes of lootboxes and micro/macro-transactions.)
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“It’s going to happen whether you like it or not” is also something rapists say, and if that’s how AI advocates are going to talk about AI…well, you can see how that might poison the well just a bit, especially with AI-generated NCII and CSAM being a thing.
Re: Re:
Also something warmongers say, and for all the optimism of the hippies, the warmongers were correct (if not “right”).
As long as we’re letting capitalism run amok, it’s gonna go in directions we don’t like, as it always has. To say that is more “realpolitik” than rapey. It’s not a statement that it should happen.
Re: Re: Ridiculous
““It’s going to happen whether you like it or not” is also something rapists say, and if that’s how AI advocates are going to talk about AI…well, you can see how that might poison the well just a bit, especially with AI-generated NCII and CSAM being a thing.”
If you want to attempt to analogize me as a “rapist”, then you can take that story walking. It’s an incredibly insulting and stupid thing to have said.
The inevitable march of progress, particularly in technology, is a real thing. There are a zillion analogies that could be used here that aren’t so inflammatory. The buggy whip makers crying foul over the automobile. The factory workers crying foul over machine automation.
I realize we disagree on this particular topic, but I was operating under the impression that you were better than that kind of insult.
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It’s not their fault our society considers consent a sex thing.
Stephen probably thinks it sounds like what a rapist says because a rapist’s whole thing is about bypassing consent… which yeah, is EXACTLY what statements like “It’s going to happen whether you like it or not” and “The inevitable march of progress” are doing.
If you are pushing past someone saying “No”, it’s worth taking a bit to look at why.
Re: Re: Re:2
My God please have mercy on all the buggy whip factory workers that were raped by an Henry Ford….I guess.
Re: Re: Re:3
I love how you ignored what I actually said to fight an argument I did not make ^.^
Re: Re: Re:4
That’s because he doesn’t have an answer for the actual statement. He knows he’s making a rapist’s arguments and doesn’t want to acknowledge it.
Re: Re: Re:4
Then let me try to make the argument more directly than through sarcasm: inevitability is not a domain limited to sex crimes. Drawing that analogy is purposefully inflammatory and pointless.
Re: Re: Re:5
Let me make this clear as well.
Consent, and violation of, is not a domain limited to sex crimes either. But we talk about it so little that we think sex crimes before we think about dinner tables or clothes.
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A rapist manufactures (what they view as) consent by insisting to their victim that sex is going to happen regardless of whether the victim wants sex, so they may as well lie back and take it (or else). All the genAI evangelists doing their “AI is happening whether you like it or not, so get used to it” shit are trying to manufacture consent for the widespread adoption of genAI regardless of whether people like the technology/its output. An analogy between rapists and AI evangelists is meant to shock you, that I admit—but it’s also intended to make you think about how they both use similar language to manufacture consent where little-to-none exists. The parallel is clearly there; if you find my pointing it out to be offensive, perhaps you should ask yourself why.
I’ve no doubt that AI is going to be a part of our lives from now on. That doesn’t mean we have to lie back and accept how its evangelists want to put millions of people out of jobs with no social safety net and/or reduce a world’s worth of creative works into being a mere assembly line product. I don’t have to use it, I don’t have to like it, and if there’s anything I can do to stop AI from being shoved down my throat without my permission, I don’t have to passively accept it being part of my life in any way.
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And since this thought just crossed my mind, let me make a related point real quick. (“Quick”, he says, like he’s never read his own comments… 🙃)
When I talk about manufacturing consent in re: AI (and especially genAI), the meaning of “consent” in this context is about broader social acceptance of a new technology. When we’ve had new technologies presented to us in the past, we weren’t told “hey, this is going to be a big part of your life from now on, so get used to it”. I think back to the Segway and how it was hyped up as a revolution in personal transportation and whatnot. Nobody said “hey, the Segway is going to be everywhere, so you may as well accept it and be prepared to buy one”. It was hyped, yes, but it wasn’t treated by everyone as some society-altering technology after it came out (especially since it didn’t really live up to the hype). Compare that to the hype around AI (especially genAI): We’re being told that its presence in our lives is inevitable, that it’ll put thousands-to-millions of people out of jobs, and it’ll “democratize creativity”…and that it’ll do all that whether we like it or not.
If genAI wasn’t being shoved down everyone’s throats with the implicit notion that they don’t get a choice in whether to accept this new technology, it probably wouldn’t be hated so vehemently by so many people (for that reason). But seeking consent for the adoption of new technology is a lot like seeking consent for sex: By and large, getting consent involves trust and communication and reciprocation, and resorting to coercion and forceful acceptance makes anyone who does that a giant piece of shit.
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Maybe it’d be best to drop the rape analogy and stick with that phrase “manufacturing consent”, popularized by the well-known book of that name.
I really don’t see this technology as being “shoved down throats”, excepting in the normal way that people get no real say in what their employers require them to use. We could say the same about QuickBooks, SAP, and Oracle, which “everybody” seems to use and every user seems to despise.
But I fully agree there’s a push to normalize it—and I’m intentionally avoiding any suggestion that it’s “intelligent”, such as by calling it “A.I.”, because that’s absolutely meant to shape public opinion in the “manufacturing consent” style. (You’ve said before that you’re just using the usual term, but controlling the names of things is a basic part of the Herman-Chomsky propaganda model.) The view that “everybody is using it” is out there online, but I’ve never used it nor had an in-person conversation with anyone who mentioned using it.
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“It’s gonna storm tomorrow” is something my local weather forecaster says, with no consideration of how I feel on the matter. In fact, I’m against it, but I’m not gonna take the prediction personally.
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Can you pick out the one word in those two sentences that makes your analogy weaker than mine? I can. And that’s because a phrase like “it’s happening whether you like it or not” is less of a prediction and more of a threat.
Re: Re: Re:2
That’s your interpretation, not a meaning. If someone said the hurricane was coming whether I liked it or not, it still wouldn’t be a threat.
Granted, some of the people you’re bitching about are trying to make it happen. But they don’t seem to be trying to make it happen to me; I’ve never used one of these systems or been pressured to. Perhaps the people involved feel it’s better to help shape the technology rather than let it come from elsewhere. Certainly a lot of them seem to have fallen for the hype, which is rampant and is probably as much bullshit as Elon Musk’s self-driving predictions.
If everyone working in this field quit today, the technology would still be coming, just as textile automation and poor working conditions would’ve happened if the Luddites had succeeded. (I don’t recall ever seeing “made in England” on clothing.)
Nah, fuck ‘AI’.