I thought it would be fun to try and incorporate some of the new AI tools popping up all over the place into my regular game. Setting aside AI art because the ethics of that are murky, I'm wondering if any fellow DMs (or players even) have had good or bad experiences trying to bring some AI to their table tops? That probably means text based tools like ChatGPT, but I wonder what I don't know about!
Does anyone have any tips and tricks based on what worked well or what really didn't work at all?
I am duty bound as a someone whose work has been used without remuneration or credit (written work) to point out that even textual AI has the exact same ethical and moral problems. It is endemic to the entire field of AI. They got away with it in mechanization, and forgot that people's creative output isn't the same.
In any case, aside from the standard caution that one should be aware that all AI uses someone else's work to generate content, and that different tools are less secretive about it (google's literally lifts whole passages from existing search results) I have had some personal enjoyment from using it to develop outlines for campaigns, create blended cultures, and generate quick reskins of spells.
I would not, however, use it for creating classes or races -- in each case it totally steals from other people. Nor would I use ti to try and create something like an "arabian Nights" style culture, because, again, it will just grab whatever sounds good from existing stuff. By blending it with something else -- say, Arabian Nights with Melanesian -- it is forced to do waht we expect it to do: generate something that is not readily stolen from someone else.
It absolutely sucks at generating dungeon rooms, castle rooms, or interesting taverns.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I've seen a number of homebrew subclasses, feats, and the like made by AI. You can always tell. They're sloppy, horribly balanced, self-contradictory, a nightmare to DM for (unless you want your characters to have 10-50 people following them around at all times and taking individual turns in combat), and they always misunderstand fundamental parts of the game.
Ethics-wise, I don't see any problem as long as you don't monetize anything and don't claim that you made it (or that the AI made it). Practicality-wise, you need a very watchful eye, and it can only work for the more creative parts of the homebrew process, I guess because AIs don't really understand what specific parts are necessary on the mechanics side.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
Using AI content plagiarizes from some source, no matter how obscure. Surely you have the creativity to come up with your own content.
Having creativity and sometimes needing inspiration aren't mutually exclusive. AI can be like browsing for ideas on how other people did things, albeit in a very strangely processed form. As long as you don't claim you made it or try to make money off of it, I don't see where the problem is. Reading isn't plagiarism.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
Using AI content plagiarizes from some source, no matter how obscure. Surely you have the creativity to come up with your own content.
Having creativity and sometimes needing inspiration aren't mutually exclusive. AI can be like browsing for ideas on how other people did things, albeit in a very strangely processed form. As long as you don't claim you made it or try to make money off of it, I don't see where the problem is. Reading isn't plagiarism.
AI inherently plagiarizes. That is how the software works.
I haven't really used AI for D&D too much (in one case I needed a riddle off the top of my head so I sought the advice of ChatGPT). But overall I see it more for inspiration than taking its results. In other words, treat it kind of like if you made a forum post and got some ideas thrown back at you. Then evaluate them for if you like them, maybe ask some more questions based on the output. And get something you like.
I will say it's pretty terrible at knowing the actual rules of D&D though. I tried having ChatGPT simulate a fight between a lv1 cleric and a goblin. First thing this level 1 cleric did was to cast the 2nd level spell Spiritual Weapon and then I think it also cast Guiding Bolt or something like that. (So it both got the level of spells that a lv 1 cleric could cast wrong in addition to casting a levelled spell with its action after making a bonus action spell.) And then its tactics for the goblin and cleric were just awful. I was in pain from how bad it was.
And if you do have something you generate with AI, be ready to change it. That riddle I used ChatGPT to make? The player the riddle was for came up with a different answer than ChatGPT, but it was a reasonable enough answer so I let him have it as a correct answer.
Using AI content plagiarizes from some source, no matter how obscure. Surely you have the creativity to come up with your own content.
Having creativity and sometimes needing inspiration aren't mutually exclusive. AI can be like browsing for ideas on how other people did things, albeit in a very strangely processed form. As long as you don't claim you made it or try to make money off of it, I don't see where the problem is. Reading isn't plagiarism.
AI inherently plagiarizes. That is how the software works.
I know that. Reading an essay that plagiarizes isn't plagiarism.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
Using AI content plagiarizes from some source, no matter how obscure. Surely you have the creativity to come up with your own content.
Having creativity and sometimes needing inspiration aren't mutually exclusive. AI can be like browsing for ideas on how other people did things, albeit in a very strangely processed form. As long as you don't claim you made it or try to make money off of it, I don't see where the problem is. Reading isn't plagiarism.
AI inherently plagiarizes. That is how the software works.
I know that. Reading an essay that plagiarizes isn't plagiarism.
If you knowingly read an essay that plagiarizes rather than find the original content, you are still being scummy. If you knowingly commission support (including financial support and contributing to its algorithms and development) an entity you know is going to plagiarize, that is likewise scummy.
No matter how you use AI, you are actively supporting plagiarism. It does not matter if you only use it for personal use, because there is no such thing as true personal use for AI--AI terms of service explicitly let the AI creators use your prompts and the generated responses for their research, so you're actively contributing to that). It does not matter if you are not going to sell the content--the AI company is still profiting off your usage, so, even if you are not profiting off the plagiarism, someone is.
Here is the reality: There isn't a "harmless" use of AI--there are just a bunch of excuses by people who want to pretend their usage is fine, without admitting to themselves that they are part of the problem also.
It is grossly incorrect to say all AI generated content is plagiarism. While the technology can be misused in unethical ways, it is not copying the inputs. This is true of both text and art.
Now there is an interesting debate about whether works that are readily accessible should be used as inputs to the systems without the creator’s consent. Currently this is an area where established law doesn’t really work well because of the scale at which AI operates. Established law would say a human artist/writer can read and view works and inevitably be influenced when creating their own original work. AI is on the one hand doing the same basic thing, but on the other hand is operating at a far greater scale than any human can. This is a case IMO where the law and ethics are moving far slower than the tech, but it is not a debate about plagiarism. This is a debate about the rights of creators once they release things into public consumption.
FWIW, I sometimes use Midjourney AI to generate quick images for use in handouts in my games. They are original images based on my prompts to the AI. I also have used ChatGPT to take a rough outline of an original idea of mine and turn it into more full featured lore. It works reasonably well and saves me considerable time. I have also used it to help flesh out an NPC persona or a quick room description. My prompts feed it what I want but it is able to help me expand on it quickly.
I can’t imagine trusting it to design a class though unless someone specially built an AI that had been trained specifically on RPG rules.
I suspect it could be used to randomly generate some decent maps but I have not tried.
It is grossly incorrect to say all AI generated content is plagiarism. While the technology can be misused in unethical ways, it is not copying the inputs. This is true of both text and art.
You do not have to copy something to plagiarize it--you can plagiarize something by copying elements of the creative expression, even if you transform it. This is pretty much the first thing they teach you in a middle school writing class--if you read something and use it as the basis for a sentence, even if you wrote the language for the sentence yourself, you either cite your source or you are considered plagiarizing.
AI only works by copying others expression and does not cite its sources. In fact, it generally cannot cite its sources. That is the "black box" problem the plagues AI--the fact that you can see the input and see what the AI generates, but the system is too complicated for even the AI's creators to figure out how that AI went from point A to point B.
This is why there are multiple lawsuits by a number of famous writers, including George R.R. Martin, Sarah Silverman, and John Grisham against AI for copyright violations--all of these creators (and many, many others) are all in the data sets AI leeches off of, and none of them gave their permission for their works to be dredged in this manner.
...plagiarizes from some source, no matter how obscure.
Well, apparently I'm the one that has to break the news to you... D&D has always been about plagiarism. There was this not so obscure story called The Lord of the Rings and D&D basically stole everything except the term Hobbit. And Tolkien just went through a bunch of mythology and reworked it to his liking. As the adage goes, there's only seven basic plots and the Ancient Greeks did them all.
To the original post, I agree with AEDorsay. If you're going to worry about ethical implications of AI generated art, then AI generated text has the same ethical implications.
My advice is, unless you're trying to make money off of selling your material, don't worry about it.
It is grossly incorrect to say all AI generated content is plagiarism. While the technology can be misused in unethical ways, it is not copying the inputs. This is true of both text and art.
Now there is an interesting debate about whether works that are readily accessible should be used as inputs to the systems without the creator’s consent. Currently this is an area where established law doesn’t really work well because of the scale at which AI operates. Established law would say a human artist/writer can read and view works and inevitably be influenced when creating their own original work. AI is on the one hand doing the same basic thing, but on the other hand is operating at a far greater scale than any human can. This is a case IMO where the law and ethics are moving far slower than the tech, but it is not a debate about plagiarism. This is a debate about the rights of creators once they release things into public consumption.
FWIW, I sometimes use Midjourney AI to generate quick images for use in handouts in my games. They are original images based on my prompts to the AI. I also have used ChatGPT to take a rough outline of an original idea of mine and turn it into more full featured lore. It works reasonably well and saves me considerable time. I have also used it to help flesh out an NPC persona or a quick room description. My prompts feed it what I want but it is able to help me expand on it quickly.
I can’t imagine trusting it to design a class though unless someone specially built an AI that had been trained specifically on RPG rules.
I suspect it could be used to randomly generate some decent maps but I have not tried.
Hi.
I highlighted two key things in your statements above. Full disclosure: I am currently embroiled in a lawsuit because my work was used without renumeration or permission in at least seven different AI products by four different companies.
You misrepresent the "debate". Current case law and federal/international policy (two different things) are actually in agreement at this moment on two points:
The first is that it is, legally, plagiarism. Worse, it is "secret' plagiarism and they did it without credit or permission, which makes it a crime on the part of the AI companies (but not on the part of the individual users).
The second is that it is not copyrightable -- because it is not original.
(Note: this is the current standard in the US and the EU. It does not apply to the UK or certain other areas).
Now, all sides do agree that the law has yet to catch up to the technology, but what the problem is can best be explained in part by the way that you frame it: once it is released for public consumption, if you'll forgive the paraphrase.
Copyright is the legal rights of all authors once something enters public consumption. Copyright requires permission from the author to use a product of theirs. Yes, there are some limited circumstances where it is permissible, however all of those circumstances only allow for excerpts, not the entirety of a work to be used.
When they trained the AI, they used entire works. they did not acquire a license to do so. THis is important to note, since they could easily have gone out and bought a copy of all of those books, papers, and research. That would have given them a limited license to use excerpts of it to do so.
They did not do that. More importantly, it has take seven years to get only a scant handful of the hundreds of training collections to reveal themselves, and even right now they are fighting discovery tooth and nail.
The argument a lot of folks will use is the "if it is on the internet, they can use it." This is literally a large portion of the argument that was used in every court case they have lost so far, because that isn't how copyright works. Indeed -- much of the work i had stolen was published on the internet, and i was not asked nor did I give permission for them to use an entire website to train their thing. This matters especially because if they had, I likely would have given complete permission in exchange for money.
Now, because of the way copyright on the internet works, the fine for such, under the DMCA, is a few hundred dollars per use of the material. A typical AI engagement may mean several million points of access for a single query -- and the folks who made the AI cannot tell you when or how a particular element was used. They can only say if it was included in the training material.
So they are fighting in part because the payout if they do lose could potentially be in the billions of dollars, and every single tool available right now will have to be shut down and trained again from scratch on material they did acquire the right to and for.
The issue is not about the rights of creators. Those were denied and blocked and cut up into little pieces and used as the confetti to celebrate the 100,00th use of midjourney or Chatgpt.
THe issue is about how they are going to pay those creators for ignoring those rights.
Now here's the best part: let's say that they start to win the appeals (and this is key because they have lost the court cases and are now doing appeals). If the AI companies win, then copyright essentially becomes meaningless.
Now, there is a separate thing going on that is kinda big. A guy used Ai to create a piece of art. He was denied copyright, and he sued. He lost. However, his arguments were so compelling that the US federal government is actually going through the process (which is long and drawn out) to determine if there is enough importance in the human direction of an AI image to provide for some degree of copyright protection for the end product.
Meanwhile, in the EU, it is already over. And AI lost. Hugely. If it wins here, then treaties will have to be addressed at an international level, because there will be a difference -- and the nations are currently set up to recognize each others laws on copyright with some interesting exceptions around certain children's works from the UK...
It is also important to note that the issue is not AI, itself, Hell, as I pointed out above, I use AI. Most people today use some form of AI and never even realize it (ever taken a photo with your smart phone? Since 2010.). The issue is what they used to train that AI.
In the same way that facial recognition software continues to screw up if you are not within a limited range of skin colors, the programs never once considered the importance of what they used, scraped from the internet by third parties, until after they had used it and the results were, um, not always useful.
I am fairly certain that what will happen is the big name, well known authors of fiction and certain research papers will be given awards, and the AI companies will be required to create new core learning databases. This will cause a huge bump in use and then a sudden drop because the current models will all have to be stopped from being used. But less than a year later, new models will come out and it will be a better experience overall because they will have taken the lessons from all of this and will make a better AI product.
They just really want to avoid paying out billions of dollars because they don't know who to pay.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
To say that AI is original and doesn't plagiarize is wild, but I honestly think that it doesn't matter much within D&D. Independent of whatever AI companies are doing, I don't see what's wrong with using AI for a private D&D campaign. It feels like the kind of field where plagiarism is, to be frank, fine.
Nobody's going to begrudge you calling your world Middle Earth, or, hell, copying the entire LotR series. Plenty of people (myself included) will begrudge you publishing your Middle Earth or even so much as trying to make money off a game taking place in Middle Earth.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
It is grossly incorrect to say all AI generated content is plagiarism. While the technology can be misused in unethical ways, it is not copying the inputs. This is true of both text and art.
Now there is an interesting debate about whether works that are readily accessible should be used as inputs to the systems without the creator’s consent. Currently this is an area where established law doesn’t really work well because of the scale at which AI operates. Established law would say a human artist/writer can read and view works and inevitably be influenced when creating their own original work. AI is on the one hand doing the same basic thing, but on the other hand is operating at a far greater scale than any human can. This is a case IMO where the law and ethics are moving far slower than the tech, but it is not a debate about plagiarism. This is a debate about the rights of creators once they release things into public consumption.
FWIW, I sometimes use Midjourney AI to generate quick images for use in handouts in my games. They are original images based on my prompts to the AI. I also have used ChatGPT to take a rough outline of an original idea of mine and turn it into more full featured lore. It works reasonably well and saves me considerable time. I have also used it to help flesh out an NPC persona or a quick room description. My prompts feed it what I want but it is able to help me expand on it quickly.
I can’t imagine trusting it to design a class though unless someone specially built an AI that had been trained specifically on RPG rules.
I suspect it could be used to randomly generate some decent maps but I have not tried.
Hi.
I highlighted two key things in your statements above. Full disclosure: I am currently embroiled in a lawsuit because my work was used without renumeration or permission in at least seven different AI products by four different companies.
You misrepresent the "debate". Current case law and federal/international policy (two different things) are actually in agreement at this moment on two points:
The first is that it is, legally, plagiarism. Worse, it is "secret' plagiarism and they did it without credit or permission, which makes it a crime on the part of the AI companies (but not on the part of the individual users).
The second is that it is not copyrightable -- because it is not original.
(Note: this is the current standard in the US and the EU. It does not apply to the UK or certain other areas).
Now, all sides do agree that the law has yet to catch up to the technology, but what the problem is can best be explained in part by the way that you frame it: once it is released for public consumption, if you'll forgive the paraphrase.
Copyright is the legal rights of all authors once something enters public consumption. Copyright requires permission from the author to use a product of theirs. Yes, there are some limited circumstances where it is permissible, however all of those circumstances only allow for excerpts, not the entirety of a work to be used.
When they trained the AI, they used entire works. they did not acquire a license to do so. THis is important to note, since they could easily have gone out and bought a copy of all of those books, papers, and research. That would have given them a limited license to use excerpts of it to do so.
They did not do that. More importantly, it has take seven years to get only a scant handful of the hundreds of training collections to reveal themselves, and even right now they are fighting discovery tooth and nail.
The argument a lot of folks will use is the "if it is on the internet, they can use it." This is literally a large portion of the argument that was used in every court case they have lost so far, because that isn't how copyright works. Indeed -- much of the work i had stolen was published on the internet, and i was not asked nor did I give permission for them to use an entire website to train their thing. This matters especially because if they had, I likely would have given complete permission in exchange for money.
Now, because of the way copyright on the internet works, the fine for such, under the DMCA, is a few hundred dollars per use of the material. A typical AI engagement may mean several million points of access for a single query -- and the folks who made the AI cannot tell you when or how a particular element was used. They can only say if it was included in the training material.
So they are fighting in part because the payout if they do lose could potentially be in the billions of dollars, and every single tool available right now will have to be shut down and trained again from scratch on material they did acquire the right to and for.
The issue is not about the rights of creators. Those were denied and blocked and cut up into little pieces and used as the confetti to celebrate the 100,00th use of midjourney or Chatgpt.
THe issue is about how they are going to pay those creators for ignoring those rights.
Now here's the best part: let's say that they start to win the appeals (and this is key because they have lost the court cases and are now doing appeals). If the AI companies win, then copyright essentially becomes meaningless.
Now, there is a separate thing going on that is kinda big. A guy used Ai to create a piece of art. He was denied copyright, and he sued. He lost. However, his arguments were so compelling that the US federal government is actually going through the process (which is long and drawn out) to determine if there is enough importance in the human direction of an AI image to provide for some degree of copyright protection for the end product.
Meanwhile, in the EU, it is already over. And AI lost. Hugely. If it wins here, then treaties will have to be addressed at an international level, because there will be a difference -- and the nations are currently set up to recognize each others laws on copyright with some interesting exceptions around certain children's works from the UK...
It is also important to note that the issue is not AI, itself, Hell, as I pointed out above, I use AI. Most people today use some form of AI and never even realize it (ever taken a photo with your smart phone? Since 2010.). The issue is what they used to train that AI.
In the same way that facial recognition software continues to screw up if you are not within a limited range of skin colors, the programs never once considered the importance of what they used, scraped from the internet by third parties, until after they had used it and the results were, um, not always useful.
I am fairly certain that what will happen is the big name, well known authors of fiction and certain research papers will be given awards, and the AI companies will be required to create new core learning databases. This will cause a huge bump in use and then a sudden drop because the current models will all have to be stopped from being used. But less than a year later, new models will come out and it will be a better experience overall because they will have taken the lessons from all of this and will make a better AI product.
They just really want to avoid paying out billions of dollars because they don't know who to pay.
You are right that in my attempt to push back on some misrepresentations about AI generation being equivalent to plagiarism I managed to make some missteps myself. This is a hard topic to stay current on and a hard topic to characterize clearly in a forum post.
I should have more clearly stated that the legal determination of plagiarism has not really been made yet. There are many pending cases/appeals/etc. While it is a gross simplification to say AI is plagiarism. It is also a gross simplification to say that it is not. It really is an unsettled legal question at this point. I have an opinion that it is not - this is based on my understanding how the models work. This tends to bias which side of the arguments I am more amenable to. I did not manage that bias in my post.
To your point about whether someone can copyright the output of an AI, I agree with you that this is something that has been established in US law - you cannot copyright work generated by AI. However, my understanding of the decision is that it was because the judge determined that copyrights could only be granted to HUMAN creators, rather than the idea that the works were not original. I do not believe an opinion about originality was given.
I'd recommend anyone interested in what is going on spend time reading different sources. It is important to be reading recently published articles because the landscape move quickly. One that I read recently that provided a decent summary of the current issues and state was:
In addition to using helpful metaphors, I thought this one was fairly even-handed about the different arguments and they also draw a similar conclusion that you do about how some of this will be resolved in the longer term (in your second to last paragraph).
This topic is about helping someone with D&D, not debating the ethics of AI. While it was correct and pertinent, in my opinion, to point out that the distinction between AI images and AI text is ethically speaking a false one, this has long gone off-topic. If you want to debate the ethics of using AI, I strongly suggest that you take it the off-topic part of the forum.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I am not a fan of nor will I use "AI" knowingly. I feel that if it is used in product it should be PROMINATLYDISPLAYED in discriptions, marketing and packaging similar to cancer warnings on tobacco products and California's Prop 65 warning.
Moral, legal, and ethical concerns aside I can see why some want to and will use it in TTRPG's. I do not think it is good for the community as a whole and like many have posted it can be pretty easy to spot.
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
This topic is about helping someone with D&D, not debating the ethics of AI. While it was correct and pertinent, in my opinion, to point out that the distinction between AI images and AI text is ethically speaking a false one, this has long gone off-topic. If you want to debate the ethics of using AI, I strongly suggest that you take it the off-topic part of the forum.
We ARE helping the OP. By telling that OP NOT to do something bad.
This topic is about helping someone with D&D, not debating the ethics of AI. While it was correct and pertinent, in my opinion, to point out that the distinction between AI images and AI text is ethically speaking a false one, this has long gone off-topic. If you want to debate the ethics of using AI, I strongly suggest that you take it the off-topic part of the forum.
And as I have noted, I am fine with using it in my game. Indeed, when possible I have been using AI images as the defaults in my work for things like what different species look like, to provide some landscapes fro my biomes, and even one created original monster.
I have also used it to create baselines for blended cultures (for later campaigns), and even played around with using it to provide some core storylines that will ultimately be used in concert to create a second campaign down the road (though how close the final is to the generated product is a coin toss right now, since I haven't started onit).
IT as quite useful (well, the one I use, at least) in helping me to get a sense of the style of clothing for each of my different cultures. It did get very annoying when it kept trying to make things for a nomadic culture as either half dressed or native american -- it really set off my radar then. The basic models they used for that 8really* need to change up a lot.
I will again say that when using them, don't try to create a culture that is a variant of an earthl one standalone.
For example, don't try to create an Arabian Nights style one. Or a Mesoamercian one. Use them with a second or third baseline inspiration. Arabian Nights plus Egypt plus Japan, for example.
Not only do you end up with a richer result, you are able to develop it more rapidly and more interestingly, creating something much more enjoyable, imo and ime.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Just want to say that it is absolutely wild to hear people recommending against AI for D&D because it's plagiarism. Didn't realize these boards were full of DMs who only create 100% original content without any "borrowing" from other media ever!
Let's be real. DMs steal content all the time from everywhere, whether we are aware of it or not. AI is not the only type of intelligence that ingests content and synthesizes new things from it - that's also what our brains do. We can't not do it.
So let's make a distinction here. If you're using AI content to make money, I think most of here can agree that there's a legitimate ethical problem there. If you're using it in your campaign, it's really no different than whatever silly The-Matrix-Crossed-With-One-Piece-But-With-Gnomes ridiculousness you might think up without it.
Now if you want to argue that using those tools - even just recreationally - normalizes it to the point where people become more comfortable with commercial use of AI, that is also a valid point. But let's stop saying that it's bad just because you shouldn't plagiarize things for your DM campaign. There's no way to make that argument without being a hypocrite.
I thought it would be fun to try and incorporate some of the new AI tools popping up all over the place into my regular game. Setting aside AI art because the ethics of that are murky, I'm wondering if any fellow DMs (or players even) have had good or bad experiences trying to bring some AI to their table tops? That probably means text based tools like ChatGPT, but I wonder what I don't know about!
Does anyone have any tips and tricks based on what worked well or what really didn't work at all?
I am duty bound as a someone whose work has been used without remuneration or credit (written work) to point out that even textual AI has the exact same ethical and moral problems. It is endemic to the entire field of AI. They got away with it in mechanization, and forgot that people's creative output isn't the same.
In any case, aside from the standard caution that one should be aware that all AI uses someone else's work to generate content, and that different tools are less secretive about it (google's literally lifts whole passages from existing search results) I have had some personal enjoyment from using it to develop outlines for campaigns, create blended cultures, and generate quick reskins of spells.
I would not, however, use it for creating classes or races -- in each case it totally steals from other people. Nor would I use ti to try and create something like an "arabian Nights" style culture, because, again, it will just grab whatever sounds good from existing stuff. By blending it with something else -- say, Arabian Nights with Melanesian -- it is forced to do waht we expect it to do: generate something that is not readily stolen from someone else.
It absolutely sucks at generating dungeon rooms, castle rooms, or interesting taverns.
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I've seen a number of homebrew subclasses, feats, and the like made by AI. You can always tell. They're sloppy, horribly balanced, self-contradictory, a nightmare to DM for (unless you want your characters to have 10-50 people following them around at all times and taking individual turns in combat), and they always misunderstand fundamental parts of the game.
Ethics-wise, I don't see any problem as long as you don't monetize anything and don't claim that you made it (or that the AI made it). Practicality-wise, you need a very watchful eye, and it can only work for the more creative parts of the homebrew process, I guess because AIs don't really understand what specific parts are necessary on the mechanics side.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
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Don't. Just don't.
Using AI content plagiarizes from some source, no matter how obscure. Surely you have the creativity to come up with your own content.
Having creativity and sometimes needing inspiration aren't mutually exclusive. AI can be like browsing for ideas on how other people did things, albeit in a very strangely processed form. As long as you don't claim you made it or try to make money off of it, I don't see where the problem is. Reading isn't plagiarism.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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AI inherently plagiarizes. That is how the software works.
I haven't really used AI for D&D too much (in one case I needed a riddle off the top of my head so I sought the advice of ChatGPT). But overall I see it more for inspiration than taking its results. In other words, treat it kind of like if you made a forum post and got some ideas thrown back at you. Then evaluate them for if you like them, maybe ask some more questions based on the output. And get something you like.
I will say it's pretty terrible at knowing the actual rules of D&D though. I tried having ChatGPT simulate a fight between a lv1 cleric and a goblin. First thing this level 1 cleric did was to cast the 2nd level spell Spiritual Weapon and then I think it also cast Guiding Bolt or something like that. (So it both got the level of spells that a lv 1 cleric could cast wrong in addition to casting a levelled spell with its action after making a bonus action spell.) And then its tactics for the goblin and cleric were just awful. I was in pain from how bad it was.
And if you do have something you generate with AI, be ready to change it. That riddle I used ChatGPT to make? The player the riddle was for came up with a different answer than ChatGPT, but it was a reasonable enough answer so I let him have it as a correct answer.
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I know that. Reading an essay that plagiarizes isn't plagiarism.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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If you knowingly read an essay that plagiarizes rather than find the original content, you are still being scummy. If you knowingly commission support (including financial support and contributing to its algorithms and development) an entity you know is going to plagiarize, that is likewise scummy.
No matter how you use AI, you are actively supporting plagiarism. It does not matter if you only use it for personal use, because there is no such thing as true personal use for AI--AI terms of service explicitly let the AI creators use your prompts and the generated responses for their research, so you're actively contributing to that). It does not matter if you are not going to sell the content--the AI company is still profiting off your usage, so, even if you are not profiting off the plagiarism, someone is.
Here is the reality: There isn't a "harmless" use of AI--there are just a bunch of excuses by people who want to pretend their usage is fine, without admitting to themselves that they are part of the problem also.
It is grossly incorrect to say all AI generated content is plagiarism. While the technology can be misused in unethical ways, it is not copying the inputs. This is true of both text and art.
Now there is an interesting debate about whether works that are readily accessible should be used as inputs to the systems without the creator’s consent. Currently this is an area where established law doesn’t really work well because of the scale at which AI operates. Established law would say a human artist/writer can read and view works and inevitably be influenced when creating their own original work. AI is on the one hand doing the same basic thing, but on the other hand is operating at a far greater scale than any human can. This is a case IMO where the law and ethics are moving far slower than the tech, but it is not a debate about plagiarism. This is a debate about the rights of creators once they release things into public consumption.
FWIW, I sometimes use Midjourney AI to generate quick images for use in handouts in my games. They are original images based on my prompts to the AI. I also have used ChatGPT to take a rough outline of an original idea of mine and turn it into more full featured lore. It works reasonably well and saves me considerable time. I have also used it to help flesh out an NPC persona or a quick room description. My prompts feed it what I want but it is able to help me expand on it quickly.
I can’t imagine trusting it to design a class though unless someone specially built an AI that had been trained specifically on RPG rules.
I suspect it could be used to randomly generate some decent maps but I have not tried.
You do not have to copy something to plagiarize it--you can plagiarize something by copying elements of the creative expression, even if you transform it. This is pretty much the first thing they teach you in a middle school writing class--if you read something and use it as the basis for a sentence, even if you wrote the language for the sentence yourself, you either cite your source or you are considered plagiarizing.
AI only works by copying others expression and does not cite its sources. In fact, it generally cannot cite its sources. That is the "black box" problem the plagues AI--the fact that you can see the input and see what the AI generates, but the system is too complicated for even the AI's creators to figure out how that AI went from point A to point B.
This is why there are multiple lawsuits by a number of famous writers, including George R.R. Martin, Sarah Silverman, and John Grisham against AI for copyright violations--all of these creators (and many, many others) are all in the data sets AI leeches off of, and none of them gave their permission for their works to be dredged in this manner.
Well, apparently I'm the one that has to break the news to you... D&D has always been about plagiarism. There was this not so obscure story called The Lord of the Rings and D&D basically stole everything except the term Hobbit. And Tolkien just went through a bunch of mythology and reworked it to his liking. As the adage goes, there's only seven basic plots and the Ancient Greeks did them all.
To the original post, I agree with AEDorsay. If you're going to worry about ethical implications of AI generated art, then AI generated text has the same ethical implications.
My advice is, unless you're trying to make money off of selling your material, don't worry about it.
Hi.
I highlighted two key things in your statements above. Full disclosure: I am currently embroiled in a lawsuit because my work was used without renumeration or permission in at least seven different AI products by four different companies.
You misrepresent the "debate". Current case law and federal/international policy (two different things) are actually in agreement at this moment on two points:
The first is that it is, legally, plagiarism. Worse, it is "secret' plagiarism and they did it without credit or permission, which makes it a crime on the part of the AI companies (but not on the part of the individual users).
The second is that it is not copyrightable -- because it is not original.
(Note: this is the current standard in the US and the EU. It does not apply to the UK or certain other areas).
Now, all sides do agree that the law has yet to catch up to the technology, but what the problem is can best be explained in part by the way that you frame it: once it is released for public consumption, if you'll forgive the paraphrase.
Copyright is the legal rights of all authors once something enters public consumption. Copyright requires permission from the author to use a product of theirs. Yes, there are some limited circumstances where it is permissible, however all of those circumstances only allow for excerpts, not the entirety of a work to be used.
When they trained the AI, they used entire works. they did not acquire a license to do so. THis is important to note, since they could easily have gone out and bought a copy of all of those books, papers, and research. That would have given them a limited license to use excerpts of it to do so.
They did not do that. More importantly, it has take seven years to get only a scant handful of the hundreds of training collections to reveal themselves, and even right now they are fighting discovery tooth and nail.
The argument a lot of folks will use is the "if it is on the internet, they can use it." This is literally a large portion of the argument that was used in every court case they have lost so far, because that isn't how copyright works. Indeed -- much of the work i had stolen was published on the internet, and i was not asked nor did I give permission for them to use an entire website to train their thing. This matters especially because if they had, I likely would have given complete permission in exchange for money.
Now, because of the way copyright on the internet works, the fine for such, under the DMCA, is a few hundred dollars per use of the material. A typical AI engagement may mean several million points of access for a single query -- and the folks who made the AI cannot tell you when or how a particular element was used. They can only say if it was included in the training material.
So they are fighting in part because the payout if they do lose could potentially be in the billions of dollars, and every single tool available right now will have to be shut down and trained again from scratch on material they did acquire the right to and for.
The issue is not about the rights of creators. Those were denied and blocked and cut up into little pieces and used as the confetti to celebrate the 100,00th use of midjourney or Chatgpt.
THe issue is about how they are going to pay those creators for ignoring those rights.
Now here's the best part: let's say that they start to win the appeals (and this is key because they have lost the court cases and are now doing appeals). If the AI companies win, then copyright essentially becomes meaningless.
Now, there is a separate thing going on that is kinda big. A guy used Ai to create a piece of art. He was denied copyright, and he sued. He lost. However, his arguments were so compelling that the US federal government is actually going through the process (which is long and drawn out) to determine if there is enough importance in the human direction of an AI image to provide for some degree of copyright protection for the end product.
Meanwhile, in the EU, it is already over. And AI lost. Hugely. If it wins here, then treaties will have to be addressed at an international level, because there will be a difference -- and the nations are currently set up to recognize each others laws on copyright with some interesting exceptions around certain children's works from the UK...
It is also important to note that the issue is not AI, itself, Hell, as I pointed out above, I use AI. Most people today use some form of AI and never even realize it (ever taken a photo with your smart phone? Since 2010.). The issue is what they used to train that AI.
In the same way that facial recognition software continues to screw up if you are not within a limited range of skin colors, the programs never once considered the importance of what they used, scraped from the internet by third parties, until after they had used it and the results were, um, not always useful.
I am fairly certain that what will happen is the big name, well known authors of fiction and certain research papers will be given awards, and the AI companies will be required to create new core learning databases. This will cause a huge bump in use and then a sudden drop because the current models will all have to be stopped from being used. But less than a year later, new models will come out and it will be a better experience overall because they will have taken the lessons from all of this and will make a better AI product.
They just really want to avoid paying out billions of dollars because they don't know who to pay.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
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To say that AI is original and doesn't plagiarize is wild, but I honestly think that it doesn't matter much within D&D. Independent of whatever AI companies are doing, I don't see what's wrong with using AI for a private D&D campaign. It feels like the kind of field where plagiarism is, to be frank, fine.
Nobody's going to begrudge you calling your world Middle Earth, or, hell, copying the entire LotR series. Plenty of people (myself included) will begrudge you publishing your Middle Earth or even so much as trying to make money off a game taking place in Middle Earth.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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You are right that in my attempt to push back on some misrepresentations about AI generation being equivalent to plagiarism I managed to make some missteps myself. This is a hard topic to stay current on and a hard topic to characterize clearly in a forum post.
I should have more clearly stated that the legal determination of plagiarism has not really been made yet. There are many pending cases/appeals/etc. While it is a gross simplification to say AI is plagiarism. It is also a gross simplification to say that it is not. It really is an unsettled legal question at this point. I have an opinion that it is not - this is based on my understanding how the models work. This tends to bias which side of the arguments I am more amenable to. I did not manage that bias in my post.
To your point about whether someone can copyright the output of an AI, I agree with you that this is something that has been established in US law - you cannot copyright work generated by AI. However, my understanding of the decision is that it was because the judge determined that copyrights could only be granted to HUMAN creators, rather than the idea that the works were not original. I do not believe an opinion about originality was given.
I'd recommend anyone interested in what is going on spend time reading different sources. It is important to be reading recently published articles because the landscape move quickly. One that I read recently that provided a decent summary of the current issues and state was:
https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-copyright-law/
In addition to using helpful metaphors, I thought this one was fairly even-handed about the different arguments and they also draw a similar conclusion that you do about how some of this will be resolved in the longer term (in your second to last paragraph).
This topic is about helping someone with D&D, not debating the ethics of AI. While it was correct and pertinent, in my opinion, to point out that the distinction between AI images and AI text is ethically speaking a false one, this has long gone off-topic. If you want to debate the ethics of using AI, I strongly suggest that you take it the off-topic part of the forum.
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I am not a fan of nor will I use "AI" knowingly. I feel that if it is used in product it should be PROMINATLY DISPLAYED in discriptions, marketing and packaging similar to cancer warnings on tobacco products and California's Prop 65 warning.
Moral, legal, and ethical concerns aside I can see why some want to and will use it in TTRPG's. I do not think it is good for the community as a whole and like many have posted it can be pretty easy to spot.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
We ARE helping the OP. By telling that OP NOT to do something bad.
And as I have noted, I am fine with using it in my game. Indeed, when possible I have been using AI images as the defaults in my work for things like what different species look like, to provide some landscapes fro my biomes, and even one created original monster.
I have also used it to create baselines for blended cultures (for later campaigns), and even played around with using it to provide some core storylines that will ultimately be used in concert to create a second campaign down the road (though how close the final is to the generated product is a coin toss right now, since I haven't started onit).
IT as quite useful (well, the one I use, at least) in helping me to get a sense of the style of clothing for each of my different cultures. It did get very annoying when it kept trying to make things for a nomadic culture as either half dressed or native american -- it really set off my radar then. The basic models they used for that 8really* need to change up a lot.
I will again say that when using them, don't try to create a culture that is a variant of an earthl one standalone.
For example, don't try to create an Arabian Nights style one. Or a Mesoamercian one. Use them with a second or third baseline inspiration. Arabian Nights plus Egypt plus Japan, for example.
Not only do you end up with a richer result, you are able to develop it more rapidly and more interestingly, creating something much more enjoyable, imo and ime.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
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Just want to say that it is absolutely wild to hear people recommending against AI for D&D because it's plagiarism. Didn't realize these boards were full of DMs who only create 100% original content without any "borrowing" from other media ever!
Let's be real. DMs steal content all the time from everywhere, whether we are aware of it or not. AI is not the only type of intelligence that ingests content and synthesizes new things from it - that's also what our brains do. We can't not do it.
So let's make a distinction here. If you're using AI content to make money, I think most of here can agree that there's a legitimate ethical problem there. If you're using it in your campaign, it's really no different than whatever silly The-Matrix-Crossed-With-One-Piece-But-With-Gnomes ridiculousness you might think up without it.
Now if you want to argue that using those tools - even just recreationally - normalizes it to the point where people become more comfortable with commercial use of AI, that is also a valid point. But let's stop saying that it's bad just because you shouldn't plagiarize things for your DM campaign. There's no way to make that argument without being a hypocrite.
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