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Generative AI Disclosure tagging

A topic by leafo created 30 days ago Views: 10,406 Replies: 116

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leafoAdmin30 days ago (6 edits) (+33)

We’ve deployed a new field to project edit pages called “Generative AI disclosure.” This field asks if your project contains the results of generative AI. If you select yes, then we also ask what kinds of generative AI you utilize, including Graphics, Sound, Text & Dialog, and Code.

Screenshot of AI Generated disclosure fields

If you select “yes,” then your page will automatically receive the AI Generated tag.

Additionally, the following sub-tags are used for the content types:

For projects that select “no,” they will receive the tag No AI.

Note: It’s not necessary to use these “automatic” tags manually when classifying your page. We may rename or modify them to fit future classification needs, so please correctly fill out the disclosure form instead of manually tagging.

Required for Asset Creators

This field is now required for all asset creators on itch.io. If you have a public asset page on itch.io and you view your dashboard, you will now see a blocking dialog instructing you to classify your pages.

Screenshot...

Screenshot of bulk tagging tool dialog

Because we understand that some asset creators can have a large quantity of pages, we’ve included a bulk tagging tool to simplify the process of tagging assets.

Assets comprised of generative AI (even if modified afterwards) that are not tagged will no longer be eligible for indexing on our browse pages. You can review our quality guidelines here: https://itch.io/docs/creators/quality-guidelines#ai-disclosure

We’ll have a grace period for people to update their pages, then we’ll likely use user reports to handle pages that have not been addressed.

Snoblin29 days ago(+2)

This is very helpful, finally I can filter out the AI stuff. Thanks a lot :)

However, I don't see the "No AI Tag" in my project infobox after setting it up. Am I missing something?

redonihunter29 days ago(+4)

From a design philosophy and as a user, I would not want to see a "no-ai" metainfo in that box.

You also do not want to see a "not made with unity", "not made with rpg maker", "no touchscreen input", and so on.

Leafo called it tag, and it is in the suggested tag box, and it shows as an url modifier with tag, but it seems to be metainfo. Like "made-with-godot".

Snoblin29 days ago(+1)

I see, thanks. Yeah the term tag confused me.
It would still be nice to be able to view meta-information on the project page, since not everyone gets there via the search function. But that would be another topic.

redonihunter29 days ago(+2)

Me too. And that tag was a regular tag before as well, as far as I know. It was bound to be, what with Itch's free range tagging system.

So yeah, I expect the info box to show the meta info about tool usage in the future. There seems to be much development in that regard. Itch now autodetects certain engines as well.

I just hope they will not show the no-ai as info in all the games. Maybe for assets it is appropriate. For regular games it would be distracting. It should show the usage of AI, but not the non usage.

newberry9400522 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Is all AI stuff really that bad? I guess if it's just randomly code generated by AI then it can be bad. I've tried to utilize AI to tell an endless possibilities interactive fiction game. It was very difficult to build the infrastructure, UX, and logic to support the AI content driven by a user's choices (choose your own adventure style).

I see this as the future (long way out) of AAA RPG games as well. If done correctly, AI can extend or make endless side quests that are meaningful and on par with hand crafted AI assets but with even more integration and specified to your character's actions/equipment/history/looks etc...

If you want, check out how I crafted 3 different AI models to build a story-driven game tailored by a user:

https://newberry94005.itch.io/pathfinder

IslandWind21 days ago

What I'm looking forward to is GPT-style functionality that would allow me to have actual, open conversations with characters in a game, rather than having to pick from pre-selected options (although that certainly has its place as well). Would be so much fun if done well.

newberry9400521 days ago(+1)

Agreed! That would be great and is doable right now. As a developer, you'd have to store all the metadata and feed the AI information and instructions, per character. It is something that can be done and some "chat" style games have done before in a singular way. The future will be fun where you can chat with any NPC and have a full conversation with an AI that sticks to that NPCs character/background/emotions. Can't wait!

If you play my game, put the difficulty on "Infinite" and it gives you a free form text box to forge your own path through the story instead of the AI generated options. It's a glimpse into how it would work. AI is good at handling your input and trying to keep the story going at the same time. I've instructed my AI to try and keep the story moving along but take the user's input into account. It's not perfect but it's the worst it will be....

Eris Lord Freedom20 days ago(+2)

The issue isn't whether AI/LLMs can generate interesting and useful game content. (They almost can; it still needs a lot of human oversight, but we are reaching a point where they can generate simpler types of content and art without more than a normal proofing check.)

The actual issues include:

Whose content is being used to train the AI, and whether that content was gathered ethically (or even legally),
Is the AI being used by indie creators to fill in the gaps of their own skills/abilities, without which the content would never be created or released, or is it being used by corporations that are trying to reduce their human wages in order to increase shareholder profits - for content they could budget for, but instead will use to drive profits rather than reduce the cost of the finished product
The amount of damage generative-AI databanks & processors are doing to the environment, which is nearing cryptocurrency/NFT levels.

Much like crypto, there's no profit-making endgame here. Gen-AI is plenty useful for brainstorming, for making a rough outline to fill in later, for draft boilerplate, for sketch ideas, for clipart-style images. One of the best uses I've seen is "generate a newspaper article about X topic" to be thrown at players in a TTRPG - it doesn't matter if the article sounds bland or the details are a little off. The GM doesn't have to spend half an hour writing 300 words of "in 1982, a similar creepy incident happened to this college's football team." AI is great at generating flavor text, as long as the details don't matter AND a human is checking the results for basic consistency. (The AI will not notice that parent & child should share the same last name.)

But it's being used to generate real news articles, without human oversight, and for those, it matters that the "facts" aren't real. And the amount of processing and cross-checking required to auto-generate accurate content is beyond our current level of computers - and beyond the level we expect to have.

The hostility against AI content isn't driven by "this makes terrible text/art." Plenty of indie developers make terrible text and art. The hostility is that the people promoting AI - most of the companies funding it - are trying to use it to remove humans from their development process so they can increase corporate profits, not release tools that can enhance individual creativity.

When they realize there's never going to be a jump to "this can write entire books that actual people want to read/create movies people will pay to watch by throwing some keywords into a generator," that funding will evaporate and the public-usable tools will vanish along with the money.

newberry9400519 days ago(+2)

I agree with your first bullet point and that's a question for ethics and legal practitioners. As an end-user of a product (like ChaptGPT), we shouldn't have to worry (we can still be concerned) about labially of using a tool. This debate likely isn't going anywhere any time soon.

Your second bullet is a little more nuanced. Technology has ALWAYS been used to optimize process, remove humans, and have lower operating costs. Think how Disney animations were 50 years ago... thousands of animators. Now, a handful of animators with powerful technology. Excel replaced bookkeeping jobs, word processors replaces typists and stenographers, self check-out systems, ATMs, agriculture machines/autonomy, manufacturing robots, SaaS platforms... This list goes on. This isn't really all that different. Why employee hundreds of side quest writers when an AI infrastructure can write better, more dynamic, content on the fly? There will be places for this, like there are still a lot of those professions I mentioned above, just not as many as before.

Environmental concerns on using AI is an interesting one. I think we could have said this about all newer technology. Everyone now has a computer in their home, a refrigerator, etc... Not to go down that road again but there's precedence. Do I think it's good, no. However, the world is slowly shifting to renewable energy that is more concentrated with the location the energy is needed, keeping any impacts local and creating less risk/need on infrastructure for others. The energy resource needs are growing rapidly and won't slow down but so are the technologies and infrastructure that's helping generate the new energy. Ironically, AI will help reduce energy waste and optimize grids (like Tesla's autobidder software) where waste is rampant.

AI should continue to get better and is probably the worst it will ever be. This will only heighten this notion around AI taking away jobs and because of corpo greed (it IS about greed, but that's capitalism, in the US) but if history tells us anything, we will find ways to adapt and people will find new and interesting jobs that coincide with new technologies and tools. Even AI.

*disclosure: I'm an optimist in general and choose to see the positive effects of a new technology while acknowledging the negatives

redonihunter29 days ago(+6)

That there is a no-ai tag is a very good idea.

Some thoughts and questions about this new feature.

Will the sub tags have negated tags as well? I guess, most users would want to use this functionality to not see AI projects. So, like browsing for no-ai-text + no-ai-images + no-ai-sounds to not exclude all the games that used llm to generate a basis for some of their code.

The AI debate mainly focuses on anything that is called art. It is most important to disclose it for assets, since they in turn would make the projects that use them be AI using projects. But funnily enough, code does not seem to be considered much in those debates. Coders also typically do not call themselves artists. But AI usage seems to be rampant in modern software development.

Also there is certain filtering and editing options in the big graphic editing softwares that use AI tech. So from a purist's view, usage of Adobe Photoshop would constitute usage of generative AI content tool. They even have functions that have generative in their title, like generative fill that works with a prompt.

So maybe some clarification would be in order in the faq. There are people that take words literally, and if you cite music and they used ai-voices, they might think to be exempt - maybe they even are, since an AI voice does not use a prompt. And if you cite the major llm products and they "only used Photoshop" they might also not grasp that using a prompt to do something is generative AI usage, no matter how it is called in your editing tool. And there are functions that do not use a prompt, yet generate content - generative expand at least has generative in its name.

In other words, make the wording as non ambigous as you can, so even people with little or no knowledge English that see an AI translated version will understand . You might avoid some people asking support, if their thingy is considered AI or not.

Oh, and will we see the AI meta info in the information box? Currently there is no information. Only assets/games, that have this as an actual tag, have it displayed.

leafoAdmin29 days ago (4 edits) (+11)

Negative filtering is coming soon.

The no-ai was created for convenience, as it is not a strict negative of ai-generated. The no-ai tag is only applied to pages where the creator explicitly marked their page as not containing generative AI. Pages that haven’t completed the tagging will not receive this tag. Think of it as a way for a creator to announce their page is AI free.

redonihunter29 days ago

Developers browsing for assets will love this feature! Even more, once the information box will show the AI usage meta info.

And since that tagging is mandatory for assets, after that grace period, they will either be tagged yes/no or be deindexed anyway because they did not give the information. So actually the no-ai should evolve to be a strict negative for assets.

But I fear that being "AI free" on code will be a grey area. Positivly claiming you did not use those llm helpers should be ok-ish. People usually know what tools they used. Mostly. I am not so sure about a thing like Photoshop. But even using a translator service on the net might constitute llm AI usage.

To me anything you use a "prompt" to create something is the "AI" we are talking about. That is why I am unsure about AI voices or translations. And even code snippets might be debateable. Or using a llm to debug code, as mentioned below.

croomfolk29 days ago

Please make AI assets opt-in rather than opt-out when negative filtering comes!

croomfolk29 days ago(+11)

I had voiced despair at how flooded with AI the assets section had become, and even stopped publishing on itch altogether. This is very good news, a good start, and I'll definitely come back to itch if negative filtering does a good job of filtering out the slop.

I dont mean to sound ungrateful here but why not ban AI entirely? No one wants it, and it's just a shitty grift that actively harms the indies that your platform specifically caters towards. Itch has always been a haven for devs and artists, why even allow assets that have had no significant human editing? Moderation seems to be stretched thin, and that also seems like a faster way to get the issue done with

IslandWind27 days ago(+7)

Like any tool it can be used or abused. I'm making an RPG and I wouldn't be able to do so without AI-generated art. As you say, there's slop and lazy content, too, but just saying that AI hurts indie devs is painting with way too broad a brush, imho.

croomfolk27 days ago(+7)

No interest in debating this

xeitek10 days ago(+2)

AI can only be abused, by its nature, it is abuse.

KaizarNike26 days ago

It certainly would be very forward thinking. Leafy went with a safer route here, but is up for juries around the world to decide whether the gross negligence of these mass-fed models is acceptable. I'm not sure what the best blanket ban looks like for this site, whether its a server side scan of every file or users trying to brigade down suspected targets.

Eris Lord Freedom26 days ago(+6)

Because it's impossible to identify AI-generated content, especially when you get away from visual art. (False positives exist in art but not to the scale that they do in text.)

Any "ban this content" rule would result in unpopular devs being harassed and having complaints filed that they have AI-generated content - and then they're stuck trying to prove that they actually wrote their visual novel dialogue instead of developing it through ChatGPT.

There's no point in banning something you can't reliably identify; that just makes the ban a weapon that would be used against marginalized creators.

why even allow assets that have had no significant human editing?

There's a difference between "no significant human editing" and "contains some AI-generated features" - and right now, the tag won't differentiate between those. A ban on "all AI-generated content" would include "I made 30 distinct character tokens and then used AI to create color-shifted versions of them." It would include banning randomly-generated maps in TTRPG supplements, where the map is AI-made but all the description is created by the writer.

...Would it include all images edited with Photoshop, since it has a lot of AI features now? Text edited with Google Drive's spellcheck?

I can see value in marking AI-generated assets (especially since those will be in the public domain, definitely something you want to know before adding them to another work), but banning means needing to define where the edges of "AI-generated" are - and, without a way to identify AI works, means any easy way for bullies to harass the people they don't like, by accusing them of something that can't be disproved.

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Yolwoocle24 days ago(+1)

When people say "AI-Generated", in reality they usually mean "Generated using *generative* AI", which is different to other uses of AI, like spell checking or content labelling, for example. In the case of itch, they're talking about generative AI like Midjourney, ChatGPT, etc.

The Hemohscin Project24 days ago (1 edit) (+5)

There's been at least ten games on the popular page in the past few months that have used generative AI for voices and images. So saying no one wants it is straight lying, the average consumer really just doesn't care.

newberry9400522 days ago(+2)

So sad... I see why this is happening but there is room for well crafted games that utilize AI (I'm a little biased... see my game). My game would be almost impossible and cost prohibitive to do without AI generated content or text to voice.

https://itch.io/post/11464895

croomfolk20 days ago(+5)

So happy theft got democratized enough to where in addition to corpos spamming my replies with slop, it can be done by you as well. Truly an institution for thieves everywhere.

newberry9400520 days ago

okay, sure :)

Yogurt The Horse19 days ago (2 edits) (+1)

You can also write something like “Earth is flat” which would lead to even bigger amount of “spamming” as you say :)

This is a discussion and people are discussing. Just writing rude stuff pretending everyone who disagrees is a fool is not how discussions usually work. But if you are truly happy about notifications this is also fine. Cheers, then!

Siixu29 days ago(+3)

Will there be any punishment if someone lies? I think that a good portion of people know that people will filter No AI so they will just lie when setting the tags.

leafoAdmin29 days ago(+5)

Our same quality guidelines apply, if you abuse the tagging feature to lie then you will no longer be eligible for indexing on our discovery pages.

https://itch.io/docs/creators/quality-guidelines#do-not-use-unrelated-tags-or-classifications-to-promote-your-game

Steg Game Dev29 days ago(+1)

One of my titles has been flagged even though it does not use AI. How do I appeal this?

leafoAdmin28 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Only the functionality that has been described in the original post has been added: a field to tag your content. There is no “flagging” going on.

Steg Game Dev27 days ago

I have a message saying my game has AI in it.

Magicsofa27 days ago(+1)

are you sure it doesn't say that you need to declare whether it has AI or not?

Steg Game Dev27 days ago

It disappeared but it definitely said it had AI. None of my other titles got that.

Nikkoin Games29 days ago(+7)

I noticed that this applies to code as well. So, if I use ChatGPT to debug and help me with code, do I also need to include a tag indicating it was made with AI? If that’s the case, I believe there will be a lot of games with the AI tag if developers are honest about it. If the goal is to filter out bad assets, I don’t think this will help much, considering the majority of games would end up with the tag. However, if it’s just to inform players, that’s fine. I’m just asking to stay informed.

leafoAdmin28 days ago (1 edit) (+3)

If that’s the case, I believe there will be a lot of games with the AI tag if developers are honest about it. If the goal is to filter out bad assets, I don’t think this will help much, considering the majority of games would end up with the tag.

I’m not sure I follow your argument here. The way one person tags their “game” is irrelevant to the way someone else tags their “asset.” If someone wants to filter out assets, then presumably they are on the browse assets page. Games are already not eligible to show up there, so any tags applied to game pages have no bearing there.

So, if I use ChatGPT to debug and help me with code, do I also need to include a tag indicating it was made with AI?

You’re going to have to use your best judgment here. If you asked ChatGPT a question about something solely to inform yourself, then it sounds like your project doesn’t contain content from generative AI. If you used ChatGPT to generate some code that you then inserted into your project, then I think it’s fair to say your project does contain content from generative AI.

Nikkoin Games28 days ago(+1)

I’m not sure I follow your argument here. The way one person tags their “game” is irrelevant to the way someone else tags their “asset.” If someone wants to filter out assets, then presumably they are on the browse assets page. Games are already not eligible to show up there, so any tags applied to game pages have no bearing there.

I'm sorry, English isn't my first language, and I expressed myself incorrectly. I actually meant to talk about the page of games, not 'assets' in that sense.

You’re going to have to use your best judgment here. If you asked ChatGPT a question about something solely to inform yourself, then it sounds like your project doesn’t contain content from generative AI. If you used ChatGPT to generate some code that you then inserted into your project, then I think it’s fair to say your project does contain content from generative AI.

Thank you for the response! That's exactly what I wanted to understand.

Hugh Lashbrooke29 days ago(+2)

If you have a public asset page on itch.io and you view your dashboard, you will now see a blocking dialog instructing you to classify your pages.

When I go to my dashboard, I don’t receive any dialog. I can edit the AI settings on my individual project pages, but I have quite a few projects and would much rather update them in bulk. Is there a way I can force the bulk dialog to show?

Idle Cartulary29 days ago(+3)

It's because it only appears for assets, not for other products. But, I seconded this because I'd love for the bulk tagging tool to be available for all users.

Hugh Lashbrooke29 days ago

I still have the AI option on my projects that aren’t assets (none of mine are assets), so I can edit the setting per-product. I suppose I’ll do that eventually, but it will take a little while.

EPICPIKAGUY29 days ago(+3)

If I'm not mistaken, the reporting is only mandatory for asset packs at the moment, right? Will games and other projects have mandatory AI disclosure at some point in the future?

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N30HRTGDV27 days ago(+3)

I have the same question. I can understand assets since there might be a legal component if an AI asset is used in a commercial project. But I think requiring games to be tagged feels like overreaching.

aliengeometries29 days ago(+4)

I think enforced disclosure is the most sustainable way of dealing with AI content long term. I completely understand people wanting to make informed decisions about where the content they consume comes from, and I wouldn't intentionally use AI assets in my own work.

Banning it completely could lead to human creations being unfairly penalized for perceived resemblance to AI (as has happened in academic settings), and removes the possibility of use for criticism and review—or even honest mistakes, as people not educated on the details of AI may not realize some of the tools they use could be considered AI.

Plus, there are legitimately creative human works, including on Itch, that have used AI assets. The early builds of The Roottrees Are Dead, for instance, used AI art. While I think the AI art was the weakest part of the game, the game was fully written, coded, and performed by humans, and the version now in development with fully human-created art may not have existed without those early builds.

So I think this is a healthy choice, and I'd like to see more clarity on what "generative AI" is considered to be for the purposes of tagging, as well as what the appeal process would look like if work is incorrectly reported as untagged genAI.

redonihunter29 days ago(+2)

human creations being unfairly penalized for perceived resemblance to AI

That they trained the models by real artworks does mean, that there are people out there that can and do create artworks that look like that...

I worry more about the code AI disclosure. In software development, AI tools were embraced more than they were shunned like in visual art. At least this is my impression. It is quite normal to import code snippets from elsewhere and modify them. Creating that snippet with a llm, instead of spending hours on dedicated message boards and documentations sounds like it would be business as usual and not even be perceived as the evil AI usage everyone is talking about.

To ban (generative) AI, it would have to be illegal to begin with. Banning it because some people do not like the concept or call it unfair or whatever would open the door to banning things for all kinds of reasons. When digital art creation was beginning to emerge, there also was a step that created unfair advantages. Imagine a place where art would be banned, because it was not done with pencil on paper, but with pixels and a program that would automatically fill in colors in a place.

Anyway, ther reason stated in the quality guidelines currently reads like this: legal ambiguity around rights associated with Generative AI content

If you sell an asset, that is a thing to be used in a thing that is to be sold yet again. If the legal situation has ambiguities and you do not know, if the asset you bought gives you full rights in the future for the content in said assets, that is a problem. Worst case, you try to make merchandise from your successful game and the genAI content you bought resembles an actual IP, since it was trained from data that containted that IP.

So I fully understand and welcome disclosure for products that are to be used in other products.

As for disclosure of AI in games, I would very much like to know what Steam does with that info or plans to do. They do collect the info since summer I believe. But I have yet to see a game description on Steam that told me, that a game uses genAI content. Maybe I just missed those. There also does not seem to be a filter option to not show games that have genAI.

What would be of course not ok, is to brag about hand made pixel art and whatnot, while the game is genAI. That is like selling organic food that ain't.

The Inky Magpie23 days ago(+2)

you said: To ban (generative) AI, it would have to be illegal to begin with.

Not at all. This is a private site. You're subject to whatever rules the powers that be decide to make. Your participation isn't mandatory, so you opt to either a) follow the rules or b) not use the site or its services. You may not agree with the rules, but you still have to follow them in order to post here (or any site that's privately owned).

Also, re: legality -- For visual art (and probably writing, though I haven't seen any cases on it yet), you already can't copyright AI-generated content. It's technically not yours. It's still new enough that the legal rights/status of content created by machine is still being debated (obviously), but right now, if you put up a game with AI images, and some other creator came along and used all of your images with their own text? It's legal. It's shitty. But it's legal. (And no shittier than stealing from a bunch of artists by using AI, really.)

I buy a lot of games here. I want to know my money isn't going to lazy AI-bros. From the perspective of someone giving y'all money, I'd much rather give a human money than reward unethical gen-AI prompt typists.

redonihunter23 days ago(+2)

My point is, there is just no reason to ban it. I did not get the impression, that there are arbitrary rules here at work on Itch. They might not list some things in their index, but that is not the same as banning.

And requiring a disclosure on ai gen created assets does have external reasons. It is not arbitrary. Assets are used in other projects.

ranger_lennier29 days ago(+1)

How long is the grace period?

leafoAdmin28 days ago (3 edits) (+2)

I mean, if you’re already here on the site making a comment (or even reading this comment, hello random person), then just go and tag your pages. It shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.

We’re not introducing these new tags because we want to punish any creators; we just want to give users the power to filter content based on their needs and want to nudge people to start classifying their pages.

Eris Lord Freedom29 days ago (1 edit) (+2)

"Assets comprised of generative AI (even if modified afterwards) that are not tagged will no longer be eligible for indexing..."

...How will untagged assets be identified, especially if modified after? I didn't think we had tools that could accurately identify all AI-generated content. (We definitely can't identify AI-generated text, but that is less likely to be included in asset packs. )

I can definitely see hostile reporting of assets being an upcoming issue. What will be used to decide if a project does or does not contain AI-generated content?

leafoAdmin28 days ago(+4)

Honestly, I don’t think it’s worth getting caught up in enforcement, punishment, etc. right now. At the end of the day, itch.io relies on user-provided tags for all the browse and discovery pages. The way I see it: if there’s misuse going on at a small scale, then we’ll likely receive reports and handle it in due time. It’s not the end of the world if a page is misclassified for some time; I think users of the site can use their judgment when reviewing projects on an individual level. The filters exist as a quick way to narrow down the result set to make looking through a list of projects more manageable.

If there is very widespread misuse of the tagging system, then at that point I would call it systematic and it probably needs to be addressed with how the feature is implemented. If it comes to that, then we will adjust the implementation of the feature to better model how people want to use it.

At this point, we’ve simply given developers the capability to use these tags to classify their pages. They exist plainly as tags; there’s no top-level filtering or penalizing going on with any pages. We’ll monitor how things go and make changes if necessary.

Christina K28 days ago(+9)

Does this apply to GitHub Copilot as well? I don’t think code should be part of this policy. Nearly every software developer uses AI tools now - whether for code completion, debugging, or generating boilerplates. It’s simply an efficiency tool.

leafoAdmin28 days ago (5 edits) (+7)

Use your best judgment. Every Gen AI tool can be reduced to “simply an efficiency tool.” If your project contains code synthesized by a Large Language Model trained on a large, opaque corpus of data, then I think it’s fair to conclude that your project includes content from generative AI. There are many “autocomplete” tools out there that don’t use this type of technology. Just because GitHub Copilot is ubiquitous and convenient doesn’t really change the nature of what it is.

I think there are a lot of people overthinking it: the tagging exists so that users have the power to filter the content they want to see.

Any expectation you have on how those tags may affect the visibility of your project is a bias you carry. itch.io itself doesn’t apply any penalties or automatic filtering of this content, in the same way that we have tags for “3D games” and “2D games.” If someone wants to look at 2D games, I think it would be unreasonable for a creator of a 3D game to feel excluded if their page isn’t showing in that user’s results.

Hope that explains.

Christina K28 days ago(+2)

Thanks for your response! I still think including code under this policy doesn’t make practical sense, considering the current state of software development.

Considering that almost every dev today uses AI tools like Copilot, even generating a single function with Copilot would require us to use the AI tag, according to your reply. It basically means that almost every project will need the AI tag.

This makes is less useful for anyone wanting to filter content based on AI usage, since many users do not understand the difference between Github Copilot which is used as an efficiency tool, and something like Midjourney where it’s being used to generate full assets like artwork.

This will lead to either:

Devs not being honest about using AI
Overusing the AI tag where 90% of projects are marked as AI which kind of misses the point because filtering out AI will return very few results

leafoAdmin28 days ago(+1)

Overusing the AI tag where 90% of projects are marked as AI which kind of misses the point because filtering out AI will return very few results

I don’t see how it’s missing the point. If the reality is that 90% of pages are using Gen AI, then I would expect the tagging to reflect that.

The way I’m interpreting your post is that you want your projects, which I’m assuming contain the output of Gen AI (but subjectively not as “bad” as some other forms of Gen AI), to appear in front of people who have explicitly filtered out Gen AI. Honestly, my opinion here is to just let those people filter how they want and don’t worry about pushing your work in front of them when they’ve clearly expressed what they want to see.

A quick look over your account shows that you don’t even have any game assets for sale. I primarily expect the majority of those using the “No Gen AI” filter will be those browsing for assets to include in their own games. I believe the average “gamer,” for better or worse, doesn’t really care about how a game was made.

Christina K28 days ago

Oh, maybe I’m misunderstanding then. Is this only enforced for game assets? Because when I navigate to my project settings, I see the following:

leafoAdmin28 days ago(+2)

It is only mandatory for asset creators, but we encourage everyone to fill it out at their convenience.

Christina K28 days ago(+1)

Thanks for clarifying that!

redonihunter28 days ago(+3)

tl;dr If this is implemented with tags, consider a tag that encapsules the three content types. Just like "no-ai" encapsules the three content types plus code.

---

It will depend on the implementation/user interface to apply the ai filters for browsing.

If people want to browse for "non-ai games" and devs honestly disclose the usage of their helper's outputs, many games might fall under the "ai" branch because of code, but the player browsing for games might not care for mere code, only for art as in pictures and story.

This is a language and definition thing. But in a game, the code is not the content. It is the means to display the content.

There currently are those 4 sub filters to positivly select ai content.

1 AI Generated Graphics 2 AI Generated Sound AI 3 Generated Text & Dialog 4 AI Generated Code

"no-ai" is !(1||2 ||3||4)

"no-ai-artworks" would be !(1||2)

"no-ai-content" would be !(1||2||3) - on the basis that code is not content.

My point is, people browsing for assets would use "no-ai" to select apropriate assests for their no-ai project. Or select the positive sub tags for their AI-containing project.

But people browsing for games might prefer "no-ai-content". If there is only the full "no-ai" filter they would filter out lots of games that feature only human made art, but might fall under ai because of code.

I mean, people already use full engines to deliver their content. Coding is just not the same as content and art. I do not see much discussion about people wanting to filter out all the games that use a game engine, or code made with help of generative ai. But I do see people wanting to not play games that have AI pictures and AI story writing.

Grapefruitopia Industries28 days ago(+6)

With “AI Generated Code”, it might be a very difficult thing to know.

For example, if I use a library, and the authors of that library used AI to pad out unit tests - none of that code ends up directly in my project, but you could definitely argue that GenAI has benefited that project, and so mine.

And whilst I’ll probably know if a big library I’m using does that, what if it’s a random dependency five levels deep?

leafoAdmin28 days ago (2 edits) (+3)

Are you making a game? It’s just a tag, use your best judgment. If the output of Gen AI is something you put into your project, then tag it. If you are bundling a dependency that you chose because of its use of Gen AI, then I think it’s fair to tag it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t really worry about it.

On the other hand, if you are selling or distributing a game asset, you should have full rights to all the material you’re distributing, and you should accurately disclose the source of any third-party resources you are bundling with your asset. In my opinion, it’s a bare-minimum responsibility as an asset creator to accurately disclose what you are providing and what third-party resources you’ve included. Anyone who uses your asset should have the full ability to trace the source of every piece of material they’re using, in case they need to defend their work legally.

Eris Lord Freedom28 days ago(+1)

The tag looks like it's required for "project contains content produced by generative AI tools," not "generative AI tools were used in the production of this project."

Deleted post25 days ago

Deleted 24 days ago

aquavertigo28 days ago(+3)

I'm not for AI as a creative disruptor; however, this is going to be difficult to enforce given how "AI" has been and continues to penetrate all aspects of content development from brainstorming (story and character ideas, pick lists, random generator tables, concept sketches), working in Adobe that includes AI, Google that forces AI for searching, productivity enhancements, prototyping and drag and drop layouts, code hints and debugging, spelling and grammar editing, AI Agents that can create and provide testing or editing feedback to mostly functional programs and whole publications in a few hours that you can then repurpose as your own outside of the AI tool, and such to the finished product. Where is the line or is there a line and how can this be enforced effectively and equitably?

leafoAdmin28 days ago (2 edits)

See my post here about enforcement: https://itch.io/post/11423454

Short answer: don’t worry about it, it’s just a tag.

TheAlCat25 days ago

No, you've forgotten something important. Read this:

Types of Artificial Intelligence (AI) - GeeksforGeeks

Understand it is the same as this:

12 Types of Malware + Examples That You Should Know | CrowdStrike

Thursday Garreau28 days ago(+2)

I'd love an option to toggle off seeing all AI content.

redonihunter28 days ago

I am curious, since you used the word content.

Because I just speculated, that people might like to filter by "no-ai-content" instead of "no-ai".

I might even go a step further and claim that many people do not even think about code, when talking about ai generated and filtering out said projects.

newberry9400522 days ago(+1)

After seeing all these negative comments on AI, I'm concerned about a distinction when using AI. If used to craft an experience driven by the user, is that a bad thing? I'm biased because I spent a lot of time crafting a game around the capability of AI models. However, it's not an "AI game" in the sense that I made the framework, dbs, code, UX, etc...

By getting rid of all AI content, it unfairly buckets well used AI with trash used AI projects....

https://itch.io/post/11464895

Ray-Yami28 days ago (1 edit) (+5)

Since I only used AI for the music in my game, I'm glad you added specific categories, although I would like you to also add the % of AI used and not just categories, because we can, for example, use AI sparingly.

Also give me the possibility to put my game of more than 1gb, because I can not upload my main game, and I am therefore obliged to go through Gamejolt which is a shame. Thank you in advance, I appreciate everything you do!

In fact my main problem with their idea is that we can't put a % of what we did or didn't do in AI precisely. So people can think that we generated everything when it's wrong. In addition there are still vague things like: and if it's just text correction, does it count or not?

For example, if I am the one who wrote a sentence, but GPT corrects it, is it ONLY AI? This seems to me to be both poorly done, and discriminatory for certain people.

If we make a drawing from an AI reference, is it linked to AI, or is it considered a legitimate drawing? Since AI did not generate the image, just the image reference. I need clarification.

N30HRTGDV27 days ago(+5)

I have the same question. What % of the final piece makes the tag mandatory? corrections? tracing? getting ideas? what about people who trained SD on their own art and made their own Checkpoint/LoRA? What if they used character reference of their OC (to which they technically hold the rights to) in Midjourney?

And for text and code it’s even harder, I’m ESL and I use ChatGPT extensively to proofread and fix my spelling and grammar errors, do I have to disclose that? Would people be happier with broken and mispelled English in the product?

So many questions that go unanswered.

IslandWind21 days ago(+2)

I would kind of like that, too, but at the same time I think AI is going to be so normalized over time so that it won't really matter in the long run. I'll just tag my game as having AI-generated art and if some people don't want to download it for that reason, I guess I respect them for that.

Java Cake Games6 days ago(+1)

Did you try requesting an increased upload limit at support@itch.io? They'll up it if you have a good reason.

Ray-Yami4 days ago

In the end I didn't need it and I managed to upload my game by trying again later. I assume that when it's our first game upload the site doesn't want to. But since it was the second it worked? I think.

N30HRTGDV27 days ago(+3)

How much % of AI counts as AI? If an artist traces over an AI image (but every line is ultimately done by hand) does it count as AI? If people report it and the artist says “Yeah it’s traced from AI” do you require them to use the AI tag? I understand this is a contentious topic but I’d like to know your stance on it.

Snoblin27 days ago (1 edit) (+3)

Everything above 0% should.
I don't get why people apparently want to hide the fact that they are using AI from their users.

kiberptah25 days ago (1 edit) (+3)

Because there's a difference (in quality to say the least) in 5% use of AI in asset vs 95% use of AI in asset.

Snoblin25 days ago

There is no universal way to quantify the percentage of xy-usage in any work. I don't think this conversation is about quality at all.
If generative ai is involved in the creation of an end product, then that should be declared so that a potential buyer can make an informed decision.

kiberptah25 days ago(+1)

If we are talking about assets then it's probably reasonable (for legal concerns it least). But not for games definitely.

Snoblin25 days ago (3 edits)

It's kinda funny how a few month ago every product tried to brazenly promote the fact that they are using some kind of "AI feature". And now here we are and the ai-tag seems to be considered a dirty mark of shame that is to be avoided :D

I personally prefer it, if every minuscule usage of ai would be tagged because I do not want to support this tech and would like to actively avoid it. I see your dilemma with the generated code-snippets and it would be fair for most people to put that in a different mental category. However, it still should not hurt to be transparent and inform the users. The front-page should still be agnostic so that quality can rise to the top, no matter the tags. Quality wise, I am sure, that there are lots of hand crafted projects that don't look good or hand-typed code that doesn't work well. This is not what it's about.

I see the percentage question in this way: If an artist takes years to create a beautiful oil painting and then uses slave-labour to frame it, someone who doesn't want to support slave-labour should not be lied to, to get him to buy it.

redonihunter25 days ago(+4)

If your oil painter worked a year to "create" the painting and then claims he created it himself, does this also mean, he made the colors himself and that he has woven the canvas himself? That none of his pupils helped color in the boring background?

The canvas is a bit overdone, but painters in the olden times did often mix their paints themselves. Some probably even made their own brushes.

In game creation there are engines used most of the time. How can a game developer even claim to have made a game, when 99% of the code is in the engine? And yes, there are devs that try to hand craft their own game engine. While there is no such reverse tag, you can imagine one: no-engine. There are engine meta tags.

People against ~~slave labour~~ gen ai might be surprised what can be considered such. I would not surprised if all or most game engines have some code in it that was created with the help of ai. And with the vegan mindset to avoid all things with even traces of ~~animal~~ ai, now that would be interesting.

I agree with the percentage being not applicable. See my example with the engine code. But I also think that use of ai code should not be put together with use of ai content, when classifying "ai". Creation of code is so much different from creating art. In other words: if you successfully can write a prompt for an ai to make the code do what you want, than this form of ai gen is not really different from translation natural language into machine language.

kiberptah25 days ago(+4)

Strongly agree that AI code and content are not the same. 2+2 will always be 4 no matter who wrote it. Dithering shader does it work the same no matter if it's generated or hand-written. If I don't want to figure our how to write A* or sorting algorithms and ask AI, the results are the same, unlike art/music.

redonihunter27 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

I belive this summary above from a user might desribe it very well, till a better definition comes along.

The tag looks like it's required for "project contains content produced by generative AI tools," not "generative AI tools were used in the production of this project."

So if you trace ai references, the content is not ai made. Even though other artists might give you the same stinky eye they would give you for tracing their art.

If you created the content with a prompt and hand edit it afterwards, it fits the definition in the initial post and that metainfo box.

If you wrote a story and spell and grammer check it with ai, you still wrote it. If you prompt a llm to give you a story and you fix some plotholes, it also fits the definition of gen ai in the initial post.

And the stance I read between and in the lines is: it's just a tag and only important for assets. And if you have to ask if your prompt made asset is gen ai, then it is.

As for percentages, imagine you take an image from an IP. Like a famous cartoon rodent. Then you modify the picture. How much do you have to modify it, for the new image to no longer be a legal problem if you would publish it as your own creation? If there is a clear answer to that, I assume it could apply to gen aI as well.

greg-kennedy27 days ago

The cartoon rodent is public domain.

KaizarNike26 days ago

Well shoot, I'm not sure what percent if any is AI generated, but I can't really figure out whether I used AI in the past retroactively like I might for assets I've included. It's a legal black area too muddled to be gray, so I'll mark all my projects as AI code assisted and see if I should start from scratch in my dev life without AI aid. I just hope online resources aren't AI generated these days.

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