D&D General Would you buy an AI-generated Castle Greyhawk "by" Gary Gygax?" Should you?

[Divine2021]

You can’t keep moving the goalposts. You mentioned Gary Gygax and Greyhawk, not a music group with living members. I, and many others, have given you our responses. I don’t think many people are interested in arguing with you about this, or even discussing.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm not going to provide a citation for words that you agree with.

I don't agree with your claim that "there is a threshold of human creativity needed, likely the majority," specifically the last part. For one thing, this sets aside that the type of human input can vary according to the type of AI. Does it have to be the human making the copyright application, for example? What about a generative AI trained entirely on public domain texts, and guided by very specific examples created by a team? Or what if an artist creates a character who is the obvious focus of a cartoon, but uses AI to generate the backgrounds, constituting a majority of the art on the page?

Congressional Research Service put out a recent summary of some of the issues and legal perspectives:

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10922#:~:text=Assuming%20that%20a%20copyrightable%20work,involvement%20in%20the%20creative%20process.

 

[MGibster]

Every year we get closer to the Butlerian Jihad.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You can’t keep moving the goalposts. You mentioned Gary Gygax and Greyhawk, not a music group with living members. I, and many others, have given you our responses. I don’t think many people are interested in arguing with you about this, or even discussing.

I'm not arguing or advocating any point of view. I'm exploring the issue. If you aren't interested in that, that's fine, but there's nothing sinister happening here.

The Beatles example is germaine because Yoko Ono gave permission on John's behalf, without truly knowing whether her late husband would have approved. Gail Gygax is in the same potential position.

 

[ezo]

So, would you buy such a work? Would you buy it if the proceeds went to his estate? Would you buy it if the proceeds went to just the people publishing it?

If I like it, I would buy it. I don't care where it comes from or who the money goes to.

 

[Clint_L]

Hell no, I wouldn’t defile the dead in that way. Steal from the dead, so the living can make a quick buck? So I can pretend to get enjoyment or an emotional high from a computer pretending to be a dead man? Disgusting, immoral, vile. It’s like people haven’t learned the lessons of Antigone.

I don't think you can steal from the dead, since they're dead, so this would be about their estate. If it was authorized by their estate, and properly cited (i.e. "written by an AI trained on the work of EGG") so that folks know exactly what they are buying, then what makes it "disgusting, immoral, vile"? We reuse, reinterpret, and reimagine the work of dead people all the time. For example, the Tolkien estate licenses all sorts of things using his creations in new ways.

I don't really understand your use of the word "pretend," either. Why would you pretend to get enjoyment from a purchase? You either enjoy it, or you don't. If it's not good, don't buy it, is my advice. If you do buy something and find you don't enjoy it, then don't buy more of it.

I also don't understand your reference to Antigone. And I've taught Antigone. There are quite a few themes; which one?

 

[Mecheon]

If it was authorized by their estate, and properly cited (i.e. "written by an AI trained on the work of EGG") so that folks know exactly what they are buying, then what makes it "disgusting, immoral, vile"?

Because we're not paying an actual author to write something worthwhile. AI is not synonomous with 'high quality work replicating that of a deceased author', its synonomous with 'cheap trash that no one wanted to waste time or so they threw it at a machine, packed up the result, and are expecting you to pay money for the creative equivilent of a burning pile of poop outside your front door'. You're depriving the chance for people to actually try and make something that can live up to a legacy to instead just, shove a bunch of 1E books in a blender and drink the resulting pulp smoothie, telling us its good at the end and not a bunch of soggy, mashed-up paper

A machine that can't even remember back more than a single room (I've seen the AI story writing stuff being used, let's not pretend this isn't a massive fault) isn't going to give you a Gygax-esque Castle Greyhawk. Its going to give you the most tepid, generic and boring dungeon, with massive inconsistencies throughout because a mindless machine without the ability to think or consider on things like "pathways to get around" is slapping together things it has been programmed to vaguely think as dungeons. You'd end up with something that makes the Forest Oracle look like high art and downright consistent in the flow of its various encounters. You don't even have to take my word on it, you can grab any of the learning models out there right now and try to generate this very thing yourself.

If you want quality work that's worth paying money for and hits what folks wanted from Castle Greyhawk, you hire an author. If you're not hiring an author, then you're producing a sub-par product in the name of saving money and ripping people off, because that's what AI is used for and what its great at

 

[mamba]

Is this meaningfully different than unreleased works by an author who didn't want them released, for whatever reason?

to me, yes. In that case it was written by the original author instead of by some monkey trained to mimic their style.

They might have had their reasons not to release it that get ignored here, but at least it is still their work. Whether I buy it in this case depends on a lot of factors, unlike the AI ripoff

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A machine that can't even remember back more than a single room

OK, but that's not where the state of the art will be even at the end of 2024. It certainly won't be where the state of the art is in 2034.

Is your objection purely about the quality? Because at some point, that quality is going to get indistinguishable from humans. It might be a year (probably not) or it might be 25 years (probably much sooner than that, honestly), but it's going to happen.

When it does, would that change your opinion?

 

[overgeeked]

Is your objection purely about the quality? Because at some point, that quality is going to get indistinguishable from humans. It might be a year (probably not) or it might be 25 years (probably much sooner than that, honestly), but it's going to happen.

I’m very skeptical of that assertion. I’m a lifelong sci-fi fan and love reading speculation about the future from various sources, but the vast majority of that speculation is utterly wrong. Laughably so. Sure, eventually, you can train a program to produce grammatically correct sentences. Sure, eventually, you can train a program to distinguish between they’re, there, and their. But I really doubt anything approaching even bad creative fiction will be produced by a machine.