games

I only started playing like a month ago and I’m really enjoying it but the AI art makes me so sad. I’d love if someone would make a mod to remove the AI images

I've put a lot of thought into this. At the risk of dying on the stupidest hill imaginable, I hate calling LLMs "plagiarism machines" because from my own political perspective the entire notion of private property needs to be done away with. Including intellectual property and the royalties collected on it. I also hate the ethical arguments surrounding their tendency to put artists out of work, which I am seeing a lot of in this thread. I know not everyone here is explicitly Marxist. There's a lot of syndicalists, anarchists, etc. But in my understanding there is no ethical consumption OR production under capitalism. Working class people producing primary necessities like food have been put out of work by machines for nearly two centuries now. At the beginning of all this there was a luddite movement that destroyed machinery, but this destruction of machinery did not result in their re-employment, because a few scattered and frustrated actions against technology, not grounded in any political theory, cannot turn back the clock of the historical development of technology. If the luddites, who showed up at factories and actually burned and wrecked machines were not successful at stopping the tidal wave of technology, how much less successful will you be with scattered boycotts against indie steam games that use AI art here and there? The proliferation of means of production drives down the price of labor power, because it decreases the socially-necessary (average) labor time required to produce goods. Artists are just the latest victims of what machines have been doing for two centuries. Your disappointment and moral indignation will not stop the ruthlessness of capital in finding the cheapest sources of labor power possible in order to maximize profits and minimize turnaround time. Your aesthetic disgust with the face melt and extra fingers will not make most consumers care, because consumers of video games are by and large not a political block perfectly aligned with the interests of downwardly-mobile artists. Your meme desire to initiate some kind of "butlerian jihad" against the thinking machines will prove no more successful than the luddites in the textile mills 2 centuries ago. What AI really represents is the inherent instability of the capitalist system as a whole. It is a crisis of overproduction. They pump out commodities so quickly and so cheaply that their price falls to nothing, but they throw so many people into unemployment at the same time. I don't say this to be cruel to artists. I have been an artist. I've never made money from it. It's something I've only been able to cultivate in my free time. I understand the frustration. I just think the AI is not going back in the box and the political mobilization needs to be revolutionary mobilization against the mode of production as a whole and not desperate disorganized attacks at particular features of it, like particular technological advances.

I leave you with Marx (Capital: Volume 1)

About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as it was by Parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned Parliament against Arkwright's scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this century, chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used.

(if it's any consolation I also disagree with the take that LLMs "bring means of production to the workers" or whatever because workers don't actually own the LLMs.)

(I do however think it allows disabled people to do art)

I don't really have a problem with a small dev team taking advantage of ai. Use whatever is at your disposal to make development easier.

Damn, that's a shame. I've refunded a few games because of AI art, I would've quite liked to play this, but I could never enjoy it if it has this in it. It may seem petty, but I am a professional artist, so it is like seeing someone take a dump all over my career every time I see it.