On the usage of AI to generate 0 A.D. content

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

9 hours ago, Wijitmaker said:

Hard to remember, but I think that was going all the way back to the beginning...

 

On 13/05/2023 at 4:24 PM, Wijitmaker said:

Yeah, I would guess somewhere around 2004-2005 

[Wijitmaker]

6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

 

Ha!  Apparently, the older I get the more senile I am...

 

OT Side note - Michael (and others) have you looked into using AI to generate more art content?  Can it generate textures?  I'm sure it could do things like icons and portraits (like your avatar).  Have you guys looked into some of the music it makes?  I even saw how there is a version that generates sound effects.  Have you guys looked into feeding it the Prometheus code base and had it review it for bugs/glitches.  It might even enable some technically minded non-programmer type people to write some scripts?

Edited December 15 by Wijitmaker

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

33 minutes ago, Wijitmaker said:

Ha!  Apparently, the older I get the more senile I am...

 

OT Side note - Michael (and others) have you looked into using AI to generate more art content?  Can it generate textures?  I'm sure it could do things like icons and portraits (like your avatar).  Have you guys looked into some of the music it makes?  I even saw how there is a version that generates sound effects.  Have you guys looked into feeding it the Prometheus code base and had it review it for bugs/glitches.  It might even enable some technically minded non-programmer type people to write some scripts?

The team as a whole has forsworn the use of AI for now due to various concerns raised. The DE mod though does use AI portraits for heroes. 

[Wijitmaker]

Huh , ok - well then never mind - keep on carrying on... *exits back into the shadows*

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, Wijitmaker said:

Huh , ok - well then never mind - keep on carrying on... *exits back into the shadows*

Don't go enlightening us with your gaming wisdom, I need to know what the early developers of 0 A.D. believed.

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 hours ago, Wijitmaker said:

Ha!  Apparently, the older I get the more senile I am...

 

OT Side note - Michael (and others) have you looked into using AI to generate more art content?  

I've already thought about that, but you shouldn't abuse an art that can become cliché, so I thought about combining both techniques.

Youtube is full of videos with AI visuals generated.

It is very inaccurate.Nothing the good old Photoshop arts can't fix.

I have friends who make fun of what happens to us in life and turn it into songs.

You can make music but it is very generic.

[Wijitmaker]

6 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Don't go enlightening us with your gaming wisdom, I need to know what the early developers of 0 A.D. believed.

I'm sorry I'm back... I just had to try this to see if it worked and to my surprise in a matter of seconds I got some pretty neat results.  So I had to share.  Sorry this is now completely off topic...  Now, I'm sure it could be dialed in for better historical accuracy if someone put the time into it to teach it what you want.  But what you think?  I was just messing around with some pretty simple prompts too.  Sure you'd have to bring them into photoshop to fix them exactly how you want them, but it might speed up the art flow (if you all are doing much art these days?)  

From a programmer side, you could use it to comment the code - create documentation.  

They also have AI narration that sounds IMHO undetectably human.

What questions do you have Lion?  I could try and answer some of them.

 

 

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

13 minutes ago, Wijitmaker said:

I'm sorry I'm back... I just had to try this to see if it worked and to my surprise in a matter of seconds I got some pretty neat results.  So I had to share.  Sorry this is now completely off topic...  Now, I'm sure it could be dialed in for better historical accuracy if someone put the time into it to teach it what you want.  But what you think?  I was just messing around with some pretty simple prompts too.  Sure you'd have to bring them into photoshop to fix them exactly how you want them, but it might speed up the art flow (if you all are doing much art these days?)  

From a programmer side, you could use it to comment the code - create documentation.  

They also have AI narration that sounds IMHO undetectably human.

What questions do you have Lion?  I could try and answer some of them.

 

 

 

You are right...And as I said it just needs customization.

They are honestly not going to regulate AI with copyrights other than corporations.

These bureaucrats and technocrats need us to become dependent on this. This is what they are betting on for the future.

I don't see anything wrong with AI as long as there is no absolute dependency.

[Lion.Kanzen]

19 minutes ago, Wijitmaker said:

I'm sorry I'm back... I just had to try this to see if it worked and to my surprise in a matter of seconds I got some pretty neat results.  So I had to share.  Sorry this is now completely off topic...  Now, I'm sure it could be dialed in for better historical accuracy if someone put the time into it to teach it what you want.  But what you think?  I was just messing around with some pretty simple prompts too.  Sure you'd have to bring them into photoshop to fix them exactly how you want them, but it might speed up the art flow (if you all are doing much art these days?)  

From a programmer side, you could use it to comment the code - create documentation.  

They also have AI narration that sounds IMHO undetectably human.

What questions do you have Lion?  I could try and answer some of them.

 

 

 

By the way, what Ai are you using?

[Lion.Kanzen]

30 minutes ago, Wijitmaker said:

They also have AI narration that sounds IMHO undetectably human.

There are AI that use your voice and can be Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

[Wijitmaker]

17 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

By the way, what Ai are you using?

I was using this one just because it is free, and the tokens recharge daily: Images - Microsoft Designer

You can review the terms here: consumerTermsOfUse.pdf

A quick look over the terms outlined, it seems that the primary concern would be whether the use of images created by Microsoft Designer in the game could be considered "personal use" or if it violates commercial use clauses. For non-commercial open-source games, it would appear to be in the clear, but commercial projects (or projects that raise funds) there could be legal challenges.

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Stan` please please,split the post , I'm interested in this.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I think I can copy the graphic style and customize it and use them just for inspiration.

[Lion.Kanzen]

 It can serve as a basis for fixing my designs.

[Wijitmaker]

15 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I think I can copy the graphic style and customize it and use them just for inspiration.

Now you are catching on, nice work 

[Stan`]

Splat.

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

Splat.

Gracias 

[ShadowOfHassen]

The thing with AI is it's very very derivative and even if you do it for just planning purposes it's going to be very similar to tracing over someone else's image. (Those two pictures are literally colorized faces of coins) and those icons look like things I can download off opengameart.org

I think the complaint of copyright by now is a lost cause legally, so there is no worry about being sued. But I do think we should think about the potential costs. It's obvious that having a professional artist draw it will be better than tracing over any AI. The thing is most artists and other non-programming creatives hate AI with a passion(and for good reason) I'm afraid that using AI for 0 A.D. would scare people away. And while we'd get half decent art sooner, we'd be losing the chance of more artists later.

But artists aren't here right now!!! Be patient I think after this release things may be turning up, we literally have the coolest open source game here if Battle for Wesnoth can get artists we can too. (I have some marketing ideas we can try with the encyclopedia and I might be able to get a history Youtuber's attention, but I make no promises.)

That said, I do think AI art might be useful for prototyping and stuff, but I don't think it should be used for anything that is shown in the main game.

To the point of music, we don't need that we have an amazing soundtrack, and if we really need more songs I know some guys. It might not 100% real instruments, but we'd not be getting that if we use AI anyway.

I said from when the Encyclopedia was just a GitHub on my profile that I wouldn't be accepting any AI writing for the encyclopedia. The number one reason for that is the same with Art and Music, if you know what you're doing, the AI created content is very obvious compared to proper English. Even if I couldn't 100% detect it as AI, I'd probably a ton of edits because it's just terrible. I don't know what Vantha's feelings on it and as he's a very big part of the encyclopedia he might have different ideas, but I know I wouldn't be accepting anything that I knew was AI.

Additionally (and this is a potential problem with art too). We want to be historically accurate and AI doesn't know how to be historically accurate, an article or picture of a hopilite would have to be scrutinized to be sure it was right-- We'd have to do all the research anyway on how it looked, and we'd have to know what to do in order to fix a bad image/article so we'd need the skills anyway to do that which begs the point why we'd start with that anyway.

Again I think the art is OK for prototyping for things like DE (which I really need to get around to playing) but I really don't think anything AI generated should make it in the base game.

[Lion.Kanzen]

40 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

The thing with AI is it's very very derivative and even if you do it for just planning purposes it's going to be very similar to tracing over someone else's image. (Those two pictures are literally colorized faces of coins) and those icons look like things I can download off opengameart.org

I haven't started modifying them yet.

41 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

if you know what you're doing, the AI created content is very obvious compared to proper English.

I already said it above.

 

42 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

I don't know what Vantha's feelings on it and as he's a very big part of the encyclopedia he might have different ideas, but I know I wouldn't be accepting anything that I knew was AI.

If you can write we are not going to replace you with an AI.

 

44 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Additionally (and this is a potential problem with art too). We want to be historically accurate and AI doesn't know how to be historically accurate, an article or picture of a hopilite would have to be scrutinized to be sure it was right-

We've said that several times.

 

We haven't even started using it yet.

+++++++

I'll leave this here.

I will use it as a tool to generate ideas. Not as 100% of my work.

[Lion.Kanzen]

51 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

But artists aren't here right now!!! Be patient I think after this release things may be turning up, we literally have the coolest open source game here if Battle for Wesnoth can get artists we can too. 

I don't think so.

I don't think we'll have any artists for a while.

Battle for Wesnoth It's not the same type of art required.

We need to be more honest in the art department and put in some power.

We need to make more noise on social media.

[ShadowOfHassen]

43 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

We need to make more noise on social media.

This is something as I said I have a few ideas-- I'll make a dedicated post once the encyclopedia is getting close to be merged

[Gurken Khan]

3 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

I don't think it should be used for anything that is shown in the main game.

Case in point:

12 hours ago, Wijitmaker said:

 

Is this supposed to be inside or outside? The window says inside, the lighting and the plant say outside. (The wood and stone work also look wrong to me, but I can't judge it confidently.)

[alre]

multimedia specialists at my company may swear against AI in many occasions, but also use AI all the time. It can produce results good enough for our company needs and it can surely produce results good enough for beeing in 0AD. Tech icons are one thing that you can do well with AI, and of course code too. Encyclopedia articles are harder, but not impossible.

People who do this stuff know this already.

Edited Monday at 17:53 by alre

[Wijitmaker]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

Is this supposed to be inside or outside? The window says inside, the lighting and the plant say outside. (The wood and stone work also look wrong to me, but I can't judge it confidently.)

It is odd because it is "artificially" intelligent. You have to "teach it" with instructions to craft what you want.  Here was my prompt:

"A video game wall texture that has large granite blocks at the bottom, transitioning into vertical wooden boards, with a window looking into a dark room illuminated by a candle. Include some wear and tear so that it looks aged, and also some climbing ivy."

That was it's first draft (one of 4 images it gave me) with no follow-up instructions.

I'm not saying you all need to use this, I'm just saying it is a tool that could be used and could be explored further for use to assist the art department.  And like I said before, art is just one facet of its capabilities... many more possibilities exist.

I'm aware it could feel threatening like it is going to "take someone's job", but if you need work done and you don't have people in the position you need - and this could help... seems like a no-brainer to me.  But, I'm not developing the game anymore, so it doesn't really matter to me what you guys want to do with this.

I just wanted you all to be aware of the possibilities. :peace:

[Itms]

I'm not an artist but I'm amazed by what they can create and very proud of participating to a project that is so visually appealing. I would be very sad to see this work from humans replaced by generated contents copied over from someone else's work (because "generative" AI creates from plagiarized content, for now).

Jason, the content you sent is beautiful, but knowing that no one spent time on it, demonstrating their skills through it, removes all the value in my eyes. I'm on 0 A.D. to do something selfless, spend much time on something for the love of it. The end result is not by far my main metric of satisfaction.

Similarly, genAI could generate documentation and increase our metrics on this front... but without real added value. If an AI can deduce what the code does, maybe documentation was not absolutely necessary at this place. Worse, it can generate low-quality comments which mask the need for detailed information written by competent developers.

And, my main concern, regardless of the very personal input I'm giving above, is the carbon footprint of these tools, which is ridiculous. If we're accelerating the catastrophe just to splash shiny images on a hobbyist game, we're being very careless. That also includes using genAI for inspiration.