Of course, it was only a matter of time before the time-honoured tradition of the demoscene also got infected by “AI”.
For me personally, generative AI ruins much of the fun. I still enjoy creating pixel art and making little animations and demos. My own creative process remains satisfying as an isolated activity. Alas, obvious AI generated imagery – as well as middle-aged men plagiarizing other, sometimes much younger, hobbyist artists – makes me feel disappointed and empty. It’s not as much about effort as it is about the loss of style and personality; soul, if you will. The result is defacement, to echo T. S. Eliot, rather than inspired improvement. Even in more elaborate AI-based works, it’s hard to tell where the prompt ends and the pixelling begins.
↫ Carl Svensson
A wonderful explanation of the rather unique views on originality, stealing, plagiarism, and related topics within the demoscene, which certainly diverge from many other places.
When humans experience art, music, film, etc, we can’t help but mix and extend works we’ve been exposed to over our lives And this is in line with our human traditions. The demoscene celebrates this: copying ideas, images, samples, etc. It is normal and basically expected, as said by the author.
People want to say it’s ok for humans to learn from existing works and using them to create new expressions, but that it’s wrong for LLMs to learn from existing works and using them to create new expressions. To avoid a logical inconsistency here we’re ultimately lead to a conclusion that automation itself must be the problem: X can be done manually by a person, but if we do the same X using an LLM it’s not allowed. Personally I can’t convince myself of this. I don’t view automation as a problem, but rather a force multiplier. It can make lives better or worse, depending on how it’s used. If we find it is making lives worse, than obviously we need to fix it, but I don’t believe LLMs are going away so that won’t be the solution.
Alfman,
Unfortunately a nuanced discussion is very difficult to have. Some swear by anything AI does, others want to completely ban it.
Just use it “responsibly”. If you are on a demo scene, clearly identify which parts are your contributions, and which parts were helped by the AI. Maybe you are not good at pixel art and music, but maybe you produced the best rotozoom effects out there.
People can shine with their skills witthout doing all the legwork themselvess.