Skip to main content

Browse GamesGame JamsUpload GameSummer Sale 2026Developer LogsCommunity
On Sale: GamesAssetsToolsTabletopComics
Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
Melinda242451 days ago (2 edits)

As an illustrator, I understand that AI is a massive infringement of rights.
but not because of AI itself... rather, because of the way it’s being used.
I don’t think the right restrictions have been put in place, which is why I’ve only used AI for simple tasks that don’t infringe on anyone’s rights: animating my own illustrations without changing anything about them, and a handful of pixel art pieces (I still do the bulk of the pixel art myself).

I think using it this way isn’t wrong; what’s wrong is stealing styles.

For those of you who are deciding whether or not to include AI in your games, I’ll tell you that my first game has a version without AI and another version with AI...

Both have been downloaded in almost equal numbers...

so I see two opposing camps of roughly equal size.

Reply
A Fals Fiction51 days ago

Where did the pixel art in the generator’s dataset come from?

I’ve seen AI images here on Itch.io that appear to have been based on the actual art made by people I know from other sites. I’ve been wondering if that’s somehow a coincidence.

I’ve also seen pixel artists give up on sharing any art online because the constant scraping of all our work wore them out. Other pixel artists who used to lead drawing events pulled back behind paywalls to reduce abuse. With what I’ve witnessed in other art forms, it’s hard to believe the pixel “art” programs were built on as much stolen art as the other types were.

But it would be a tiny amount or comfort (with how the AI industry is burning up our planet, polluting essential resources for quick text-to-image-to-text and chatbot production, and spreading harmful propaganda developed by artist-hating fascists) if these responses from other pixel artists were from paranoia, not actual abuse.

(I know my writing, photos, and graphic designs were scraped without my consent. I’m not sure my pixel art has.)

Reply
Ratsnake Games51 days ago

"I’ve been wondering if that’s somehow a coincidence."

See, the fun thing about AI is that nobody can ever say for sure if it is a coincidence or not. Therefor, it is completely morally acceptable!!1! 

Reply
GeppettoNoir27 days ago

"Where did the pixel art in the generator’s dataset come from?"
That's not how they work. The training data is off somewhere in a lab. By the time you are generating stuff, the AI has a fully formed neural network.

Think of it like this (metaphorically but also literal, functionally speaking):

- Your stuff got scraped.

- It was ripped apart and "chunked" into a special format that the AI brain can comprehend

- It was fed to the neural network, which magically understands it (not BSing you, this was not programmed in, kind of a big deal no one talks about)

- Then it was able to be "trained" through positive and negative reinforcement feedback because it somehow magically understands the concept of positive and negative want/desire/whatever you wanna call it.

- When a picture of your scraped art looks like a picture of your scraped art, it's ready to go.

- That AI is copied, and it's copies are crystallized in a permanent state. Hence GPT 4.0, GPT 5.0, etc. The frozen copy is sent out for use. No one ever gets to see or interact with the mother AI except the people that keep it, there with your scraped art data.

- When the public generates an image, the AI creates a field of energy that holds everything there could possibly be (according to what it knows). It then literally imagines or dreams the requested image as best as it can until it realizes it amidst the chaos and locks onto it. Then, when it dies, all the static falls away as the field collapses and what's left is retrieved as data and reconstituted into the image the public sees when they click generate.

- Once an AI is out and in use, it can no longer be given any new information, nor does it have access to the information on which it was trained. It can only have neural pathways strengthened to make certain outcomes more likely. Companies that have important info leaked, it is due to 3rd party "training" and "memory" brute force re-application of data that creates a weak point for attack.

Reply
Eldwood25 days ago(+1)
  • Your stuff got scraped.

So you know that AI is based on stolen art, and you still use it.

Reply
GeppettoNoir19 days ago

Perhaps my point of view is different. I grew up in a time when it was common knowledge that there are no security guarantees for anything you put up on the internet--which is quite literally the most public forum in all of recorded history. Scraping cannot bypass things like password protected pages. So that means anything that was scraped was truly, literally open to the public in some way. That is, anyone could type in the link and look at it. Anyone can right-click and hit "save image" or even screenshot then copy/paste. I know this. You know this. We all know this. It's known whenever we put something up on the world wide web. In truth, this is like finding out there really was a boogie man all along. We were warned all our lives.

Also, with or without that scraped art, AI would still be able to produce that exact art. Because thinking AI is referring back to any data set after it has been trained means you haven't yet gone far enough in your reasoning. This isn't pattern recognition, no matter who tries to tell you it is. AI is actually 3 things in one--and one of those things is a neural net. It's literally a simulated human brain, copied from actual human brains (read how we got neural net tech, no joke). So if we understand brains as well as we think we do, then this thing literally learns and thinks and reasons just like you and I do. So before I can take the stealing argument seriously and whole-heartedly, I have to ask:

What is stealing versus inspiration? You know what I mean?

Reply
A Fals Fiction1 day ago (1 edit)

Scraping cannot bypass things like password protected pages. So that means anything that was scraped was truly, literally open to the public in some way.

Untrue. This statement is years out date.

It’s hard to believe you haven’t seen by now any of the reports of private information being scraped during data breaches and unethical policy changes to be used in “machine learning” paid for the big AI companies. The mass scraping of everything, including sensitive documents on personal devices or in “secure” storage, is one of the major sources of anger and frustration about this subject.

It’s important to remember, too, why “everything online is public” is a defeatist response to hugely controversial actions (repeatedly judged illegal in courts) by Google, Facebook, and oppressive government agencies.

I’m old enough to remember when web crawlers were only supposed to visit without permission. But then Google took over web searching and made people afraid not to allow its indexing. Then the copy argued it had to be allowed to copy and store web page contents, including any and all images, to return search results. Then, oops, they were using copyrighted images the whole time for massively secretive machine learning projects with almost no ethical oversight, all while heavily lobbying politicians for control over relevant laws and enclosing millions to billions of people into spying tech.

There was almost no honest consent of use in these processes.

Also, with or without that scraped art, AI would still be able to produce that exact art.

Nowhere close to true. Much of the generative models out there are elaborate plagiarism machines.

Look at the official complaints for why stopping scraping would destroy the AI/ML/chatbot industry.

Or what happened when scraped images are “poisoned” with invisible noise. The anti-AI tools wouldn’t be nearly as effective as they are if the generative models could reproduce the images on their own.

Reply
Deleted post19 days ago
Deleted 19 days ago
Reply
DREAM_SEARCH_REPEAT2 days ago

Hi. I'd like to say that i agree in what you said. That the AI most of the times is being used in the wrong way. But i'd like to add some corrections.

There is no such thing. as 'stealing styles'. Basically because the art style, like literature/movie/music or game genres are not something copyrightable. (And we can thankful for that).

What is a copyright infringement is, for example, drawing Mario or Sonic without the explicit permissions of their owners. 

It doesn't matter if you are the first person in create a new art style. Let's imagine you are Studio Ghibli and you have a really specific art style. You used for spirited away. You can copyright the movie, characters, songs made for the movie, etc. But not the way it was draw or animated. Like i said, is the same with genres, you can write an horror story, but can't copyright the whole horror genre.

And about the data sets. As far as i know the real felony is many companies used pirated material to train models. But there is no law that forbid people or machine to learn from any kind of source, even if that is a copyrighted one.

Sorry if my reply is too long, i have to learn when to shut up, haha. And i am not  ranting, just think many people don't understand how copyright laws work. If i am the one wrong. Please, let me know.

:-)   

Reply
Melinda24241 day ago

Hi, I got the idea of “style theft” from a lawsuit filed a while back by a Studio Ghibli illustrator against an AI. I don't remember the details, nor do I know if she won the case, but she claimed that her style had been stolen...

Reply
redonihunter1 day ago

That was fake news.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ghibli+ai+cease+and+desist&ia=web

Someone faked cease and desist letters in 2025. We live in the age of misinformation.

Reply
AboutFAQBlogContact us
Copyright © 2026 itch corp · Directory · Terms · Privacy · Cookies