There's been a bit of a stir recently with the release of the Stellaris: The Machine Age DLC, as Paradox Interactive put up an AI statement on Steam that the developers have now attempted to give more info on.
On Steam there's a notice if you scroll down far enough that reads:
We employ generative AI technologies during the creation of some assets. Typically this involves the ideation of content and visual reference material. These elements represent a minor component of the overall development. AI has been used to generate voices for an AI antagonist and a player advisor.
They have to do this, since Valve now have new rules about developers stating on Steam pages what they used AI for in the games.
So it's clear the game is using AI content, specifically for generated voices. In a way, an AI voice for an AI seems kind of on-point for a sci-fi space game like this but AI makes a lot of people feel quite uneasy (and for good reason). This caused some commotion on the Steam forum with lots of replies. The Game Director on Stellaris, Stephen Muray, did reply to the Steam post to note:
About this - the AI voice generation tools we use on Stellaris ensure that the voice actors that signed up and built the models receive royalties for every line we create. Ethical use of AI technology is very important to us - we're pretty good at exploring dystopian sci-fi and don't want to end up there ourselves.
I'll have the team put together a dev diary on how we use AI tools a couple of weeks from now.
And then explained further on Reddit too:
We didn't use it for concept art in The Machine Age - we've got a couple of awesome concept artists on staff for that. (You'll get to see more of their art in next week's dev diary.) There may be a couple of AI generated pieces on the visdev exploration/mood board, but they'd be among a bunch of other inspirational thematic pictures.
Personally, I use image generation tools to make basic sketches of things the System Designers and I are thinking of since I very much suck at art, but am pretty decent at getting computers to do what we're thinking. (Making tokens for 4,000 Pathfinder characters that I'll never play paid off!) The artists then take our ideas and might or might not use them as inspiration to make final assets. None of those design images go into the game.
We used some text generative AIs for "ideation of content", as we said - basically content designers can break writer's block by asking an AI "hey, what are 40 different things I can find in a mysterious box" and see if any of them spark any inspiration. None of the results or generated text go into the game.
We've got some strict guidelines in place on how we can use AI tools legally and ethically that we abide by.
One of their concept artists also followed up to say:
Chiming in here late but for myself (not speaking for the entire art team here) there were several explorations that leveraged generators but none were beyond the vis dev stage, and none were continued into the final art pieces.
For myself at least 0% of in-game assets include any sort of AI.
Most importantly: how do you feel about this? Let me know in the comments. Currently the DLC has a Very Positive rating on Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Go on, please.
This entire corporate push of AI is so overwhelmingly evil that I'd sacrifice all these minor "ethical" uses to get rid of it. I don't want examples of how it could be not terrible (it could, but in 99.999% of cases it is indeed terrible), I don't want people to shift responsibility to users instead of the people subsidizing it all and dictating the way it is developed, I don't want to have to figure out how exactly they are externalizing the costs.
"Generative AI" is the weapon of the enemy. We don't use it, we don't need it. Get rid of the ethical problems first, and only then we can discuss acceptable uses.
NathanaelKStottlemyer May 13
QuoteAbout this - the AI voice generation tools we use on Stellaris ensure that the voice actors that signed up and built the models receive royalties for every line we create. Ethical use of AI technology is very important to us - we're pretty good at exploring dystopian sci-fi and don't want to end up there ourselves.
Last I heard the contract that allowed that to happen was set up by the top brass of the voice actor's guild and all the little people didn't want it.
For instance related to movies:
https://www.polygon.com/24152375/kingdom-planet-apes-visual-effects-weta-fx-mocap
ssj17vegeta May 13
- An employee using an AI to automate a boring or repetitive part of his/her job = GOOD.
- A company using an AI to replace an employee = BAD.
Quoting: ssj17vegetaIt's simple, really.I'd say mostly, yes.
- An employee using an AI to automate a boring or repetitive part of his/her job = GOOD.
- A company using an AI to replace an employee = BAD.
But of course, some people WILL lose their job because of AI.
Any new technology of that caliber will cause such changes, no matter how "ethical" you try to go about it.
When we came up with electrical lightning, eventually a lot of people whose job it was to keep oil street lanterns lit had to seek other employment, as did many others in jobs that were no longer needed (or not in that number).
That's just the downside of progress happening.
But it's not like anyone's thrown off a cliff. It can't be a nice thing, but people are quite capable of learning and doing other jobs.
My hope is just that those people won't be left fending for themselves, but instead some of the money saved will be invested in them in the form of education or at least very generous payoffs.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 13 May 2024 at 8:33 pm UTC
Mountain Man May 13
QuoteDr. Walter Gibbs: "Computers are just machines; they can't think."You have the one fellow from Paradox saying, "For myself at least 0% of in-game assets include any sort of AI."
Alan Bradley: "Some programs will be thinking soon."
Dr. Walter Gibbs: "Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking, and the people will stop!"
Perhaps not directly, but he was no doubt influenced to some degree by ideas generated by the AI either by himself, or other members of the team.
The real problem for AI, I think, is that it doesn't create, it just iterates based on something that already exists, often without identifying the source, so it can easily lead to someone inadvertently copying other people's ideas without giving them due credit or compensation.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 13 May 2024 at 11:20 pm UTC
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