I don’t consider the AI disclosure “optional,” even though I know Itch doesn’t require it. Whenever I release a game, I immediately fill out the AI disclosure form, both for the sake of transparency and the functionality of being indexed along with other AI-assisted games.

I’m aware that many players will simply “move on” from my games, due to having the AI-assisted label, and that’s fine. Chances are, they weren’t people who would play my games anyhow. I share the same philosophy as the late Kurt Cobain: “I’d rather be hated for who I am, then loved for who I am not.” That is why, at Orange Heart Creative, I make sure to disclose everything that is AI-generated in my projects.

That being said, I don’t think people should be so quick to balk at AI-assisted games/assets/art, etc. Some people do put a lot of work into these projects - myself included - and I feel they should at least be given the same chance as other games to prove that they can be fun and engaging. Yes, there will be some terrible projects but, every once in awhile, you might run across a gem of which you otherwise would’ve never known.

All I’m saying is give all games a chance. If it’s crap, move on. If it’s not, let the creators know, whether or not they use AI, that you appreciate their work by leaving comments/feedback, replies in the community, donations; however you see fit.

I don't get why Generative AI is even allowed on itch.io. this is a site for releasing your art and games there's no place for AI here. at the bare minuimum there should be a "hide ai" option like pintrest has if they're really set on still allowing Generative Ai

I never used generative AI in my games and never will. How to fill in the AI disclosure for games that predate Itch's policy change?

I don't know if it's a good idea to mark your game as "no AI used" because that's what AI looks for to learn.

Itch added the disclosure on November the 20th of 2024, Thrack was announced April the 11th of 2024. november is after april; we could not have added a "no ai" disclosure at the period of Thrack's first announcement or conception as the feature did not yet exist on itch. 

https://tpsg.itch.io/thrack no textures were created with the use of ai in thrack, I made all of them myself and a few were sourced from the open domain (rare and may be replaced when we move past the demo versions). 

no music track in thrack the fox was generated utilizing ai, Franco Beceiro and Suluyeimon composed all of the Thrack tracks.

no sound effects in thrack were generated utilizing ai, most of them were code generated from Nyquist that I myself had written and have considered giving to the open source community to support fellow developers in the future. 

the story and dialogue was not written using generative ai, I wrote it myself. occasionally having debates with Trent in relation to the story scope and feel.

as for code 100% of it was written by me and possibly 1% was reformatted by ai. what do I mean by that?

I write the tooling and all concepts for the development curve, sometimes I have an LLM finalize that tooling (this has zero bearing on players, you never touch any of that code).

then when i'm feeling lazy i'll write a forloop and have an ai reformat it into a lambda, or list comprehension, or write my regex, everything is documented and maximally optimized for player convenience by me, manually as the programmer. there is not a single line of genuine thought written by an LLM anywhere in Thrack that the player will ever see or touch. I do not trust it enough to ever use it as more than I would a linter.

the controls were all made and tested manually, by me.

no animations were done by ai, I did them all myself, manually, rigging them, and positioning them, by hand except for some particle effects which are a series of meshes created by hand and the logic created in batch from a script or manually and adjusted, by hand.

no mesh or geometry was generated by ai, I created all of them.

although vocal-work has not been finalized, none of it is or will be generated by artificial intelligence.

ai was not used by any meaningful means in thrack the fox, I did everything, except for the music which was made by two composers, and a few animations which were done by Boki Animations who is sadly no longer working on this project.

Thrack does not have a label, because it was listed before the label existed.

So I am relatively new to coding and making games but as far as AI, I mean I use Claude to ask it questions about how to move a character a different way besides you know like self.rect.x or something in pygame or simple stuff like that.  I dont vibe code.  Actually coding is fun and its hard and Im only in pygame. I suck but im getting better and will release some stuff. I got some things in the works.  Just gotta code better. Do I need AI for that? Is that disclosure?