It’s been used many times before, but I like the analogy of ordering food. If I go to a restaurant and order risotto, I haven’t made the dish, I’ve only consumed it. I want you to focus on that word “consume”, it’s important here.

Another idea I’ve seen recently that I like was a summed post something like this:

• People use AI to write a 4,000 word article from a 15 word idea (introduction of noise)
• Others then use AI to summarize the 4,000 word article into a 15 word blurb (introduction of more noise)

I know I’m using a lot of analogies here; from food to writing and now the visual medium - but stick with me. Completely sidestepping any lofty notions of soul or humanity, let’s look strictly at what’s being communicated in a visual piece of art generated by AI. It’s an idea, one containing neither your specific style (the creative process) or vision (the final product), though you may feel you get a close approximation after several iterations and a detailed/complex enough prompt. If you wanted to convey the idea of “eagle perched in a tree”, you’ve already done so with that phrase (or prompt in this respect). By providing an AI-generated image, you’ve narrowed my own ability to interpret down into the AI-generated noise now taking up space between us.

The reason you’d use AI-generated art is because you need to fill space, like the thumbnail to go with an article. An empty space to dump things into. While I can’t ever claim enough authority to define what exactly art is and is not (nobody can), I can say with absolute certainty that no matter how far the tech evolves, to me PERSONALLY, AI will only ever generate content, not art. There is already more art in the world than I could possibly consume in a hundred lifetimes, I neither want nor need this garbage.

We could explain it to you, but you’re not interested in understanding.

Check out https://www.giuspen.net/cherrytree/, lightweight note-taking app with interesting scripting function built in.

Even if that’s not your cup of tea, it has the option to save your notebook to a single sqlite file, so I take that as good enough proof it’ll work for your similar purposes as well.

This kind of infuriates me. On rare occasions loading into the game (unmodified) it’ll glitch out and forget to render the borders for a good 5 minutes or until first teleport. Like come on! I can see it! I know you’re doing it!

Another game, Code Vein (shut up, I love it, just embrace some trash from time to time) did the same thing. I could tell because the layering was messed up and your partner’s nameplate would render over the black borders by mistake …

Disappointing, but somehow inevitable.

"This will enable us to release the vast majority of games that use it. "

So it sounds like the floodgates are opening and now it’ll be up to the users to sort out the flood of BS. None of this is truly surprising, while I’m not cynical enough to suggest their temporary stance was a quick way to score some easy points with the anti-AI crowd, we all kind of have to acknowledge that this technology is coming and Steam is too big to be left behind by it. It stands to reason.

I also understand the reasoning for splitting pre/live-generated AI content, but it’s all going to go in the same dumpster for me regardless.

I certainly think it’s possible to use pre-generated AI content in an ethical and reasonable way when you’re committed to having it reach a strong enough stylistic and artistic vision with editors and artists doing sufficient passes over it. The thing is, the people already developing in that way would continue to do so because of their own standards, they won’t be affected by this decision. The people wanting to use generative AI to pump out quick cash grabs are the ones that will latch onto it, I can’t think of any other base this really appeals to.

I keep seeing people make this argument and I think we all need to realize that different people use social media in different ways.

I moved to Bluesky as well. It’s where my friends went, it’s where the artists and authors I follow went, it’s where some of the bigger names I care to keep up with went.

Feels a little gross, I’m not gonna defend Bluesky or anything, but there are more reasons for the choice.

In response to a perfectly valid question about dumbass plan I just came up with:

"we'll burn that bridge when we come to it"

Awful system, they're always giving me much less than I expect.

Is it actually finding new stuff, though? Or just refining classification methods to better identify what we already had lying around?

God, but that just seems like the worst. The fun of karma was that it was worthless but hey, a lot of us liked seeing big number go up and that was fulfilling in itself. Now people are going to be incentived to post for the sake of posting to try to earn something. Low effort, contentious, engagement driving spam.