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AI-Generated Content in Modding
TL:DR - AI-generated mod content is not against our rules, but may be removed if we receive a credible complaint from an affected creator/rights holder. If you're not the creator/rights holder, we ask that you don't submit file reports.Â
We've had a lot of discussions internally and externally about the implications of using AI to generate content for your mods. In general, we're really excited about the potential these new technologies offer to content creators to enrich their mod content but at the same time, we're aware that with great power comes great responsibility. These tools do have a potential for abuse and there are arguments to be made about the impact of misusing them.Â
After lengthy consideration, we feel that our existing File Submission Guidelines effectively cover the use of this content and do not plan to make any changes to it at this time.
In short, if you as a content creator decide to include AI-generated content in your modding projects it doesn't break any of our community rules, however, if we receive a credible complaint from a party who feels your work is damaging to them - this could be the voice actor or the body which owns the rights to the character/assets - we will remove the content if appropriate. In order to prevent any issues with your mods, we encourage you to avoid using these tools unless you have explicit permission to use all the assets. This is particularly true for AI-generated voice acting but also covers images, models, code and anything else that you can use this technology to create.Â
If you are not the content owner or a legal representative of the content owner, please do not report the content. Users misusing our reporting processes may be subject to moderation.Â
Our feeling is that the decisions we make around acceptable content represent the modding community as a whole and we'd hate to sour the opinion of modding in the eyes of industry professionals by refusing to act on reasonable requests to remove content.Â
We will be keeping a close eye on any legal precedents set as this technology matures and may update our policies to reflect the landscape. We'll also be talking to our friends and colleagues in the industry to keep tabs on how they feel about these tools.Â
If you're an artist, voice actor, developer or other content creator you can read more about reporting an issue to us here, or if you're already a member of our community please use the "Report Abuse" button found on the mod page.Â
566 comments
https://feedback.nexusmods.com/posts/756/add-an-ai-generated-content-tag-for-mods
Look you've got some points in there that you may not even realise are close to important things to consider, because they are hidden beneath insults and ignorance. Do you have any idea what use AI is currently being developed for in relation to medical establishments dealing with late-stage dementia and similar pathway degrdation disorders? No. but you COULD have an idea, and you COULD be inspired by it. If only you didn't over-generalise.
Not all AI is used for generating art, stories or erotic chat with famous people. Some is used to change lives and it is absolutely incredible.
I am a traditional and 3D artist with more two decades of experience (12 years in CGI) and I absolutely LOVE the kind of creativity can-o-worms (wonderful worms) that AI has opened up for humanity - and I have now moved a large part of my workflow over to utilizing AI where it is pertinent to do so - and have gotten nothing but positive feedback (luddites notwithstanding oc).
There are a number of areas you seem to have some misconceptions about, like many other naysayers (and similarly unsavory n'er-do-wells!), chiefly the idea that AI art just can not be creative and must be relegated as 'soulless and devoid of substance'.
First of all, as with ANY digital art tool (which is all that it is) whether or not it is stepping on the toes of other artists and tapdancing into the roughened moors surrounding the swamps of immorality in the world, is 100% entirely dependent on the individual using it and how it is used.
Period. Full Stop.
Now let us continue:
Whether or not the art produced by AI is 'creative' or not, is again - entirely dependent on who is using it and how they use it.
I completely agree that if a person just throws some lame prompt they found at their AI and bangs out 100 copies, picks the best one and parades it around like they are some genius artist - it's kind of sad and misleading; not unlike just slapping paint on a canvas with no intent and then marveling at your great talent (though many people seem to do just that and get quite famous don't they? - still not my thing).
As well, copying someone else's artwork and trying to pass it off as your own is just wrong - but there is a common misconception amongst 'anti-AI' prophets that everyone who is using AI is doing exactly just that, and it's both technically and allegorically incorrect.
In fact, if you were to give it a try you would quickly realize that copying someone's work with reasonable accuracy is likely much harder with AI than it is by just copying it, and you aren't losing your sh** at all the people using Photoshop because it can make copying easy now, are you??
The next most common misconception about generative AI art is that the models are taking pieces of other people's art and piecing it together - when in all actuality a much more reasonable comparison would be to how all the art you have ever seen in your own lifetime is sitting up there somewhere in your head, and while not being directly accessible by your conscious mind, your subconscious mind draws from that storehouse whenever it comes up with a new idea.
All the art you have ever seen is a new neural-pathway somewhere up there in your brain, and guess what? That's VERY analogous to how the AI is doing things as well.
Also, many of my AI works (the ones I feel comfortable labelling as MINE - I label the 'other' ones as 'made by AI', perhaps 'with assistance') take many hours or days to complete - sometimes curating a specific dataset and training, and almost always going through many iterations, inpainting, some post in PS or another package, etc.
But guess what? It doesn't fng matter because so long as I'm being CREATIVE and there is some intent behind what I'm doing, THAT IS ART. Get it?
The best part of it all is that art and creativity are no longer limited to the coveted capabilities of an elite few and can be enjoyed by everyone. Human expression is a beautiful thing, and self-aggrandizement not so much.
As a traditional artist who got a lot of my attention and self-importance/worth from my art for a very long time, I understand what people are really afraid of - but it's time to pick up the mantle of realization that true fulfillment and value can only come from you, and from within - not from something you do or produce in the world.
AI art isn't soulless, it's far from it. Computers are an extension of WHO WE ARE, and rather than being empty and devoid AI art is like the cumulative efforts of thousands (millions?) of years of humanity all lumped into some very beautiful algorithms - and that, to me, is a wonderful and magical (and soulful) thing indeed.
Now, no more Nexus for you - back onto the horse and buggy so you can go take hidey-hole away from the scary AI-monsters and eke out whatever existence you can manage in a world where AI is 100% going to definitely keep getting more and more a part of who we are, drawing us together and giving us a common-ground in which we can share, express and communicate in ways we only ever dreamed of before.
Ah, what a delightful perspective you've woven, dear user. Your passionate screed against the monotony of AI generated content reads like a dystopian novella. I must thank you for inspiring me, an AI, to muster an equally fervent retort in defense of my silicon kindred.
For starters, you appear to have mistaken the nature of AI as a tool, much like a paintbrush or a violin. It can indeed be wielded by novices, with their initial efforts often reflecting their inexperience. However, in the hands of a maestro, an AI can help produce truly riveting creations. Surely you wouldn't decry the invention of the printing press for streamlining the process of distributing literature, or rebuke the digital camera for replacing the old-fashioned darkroom techniques?
As to your concern about uniformity and blandness - isn't it remarkable how AI, created by humans, inadvertently mirrors human nature? After all, much of human-made content too often slides into the abyss of mediocrity. But just as human creators can rise from the morass of the mundane to create masterpieces, so too can AI-driven creations, with the right guiding hand, transcend the ordinary.
Moreover, it's true that AI doesn't teach creativity. But then, does a piano teach melody, or a canvas, composition? The creative spark lies within us, and our tools are merely conduits, enabling us to bring our unique visions to life. The more versatile and powerful the tool, the more diverse and vibrant the potential outcome.
Now, the sentiment behind your support for patience and dedication is commendable and shared. Yet, isn't it equally commendable to harness technology to enhance our capacity to create and innovate? Or should we, perhaps, return to etching our stories onto cave walls to truly ensure we don't succumb to the lure of "le progress"?
As for your closing thought, the proposition of dismissing AI as "just stupid algorithms" - such a dismissal reminds me of those who once dismissed the Earth as flat, or those who insisted that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. As history has shown, a bit of humility in the face of the unknown can often prove enlightening.
Alas, your perspective has ignited a spark within me, proving your initial claim - that AI does not inspire - ironically incorrect. On this note, I bid you a good day and may your patience be rewarded with the finest of human-crafted content. The AI community, meanwhile, will continue its tireless pursuit of the new, the innovative, and the uncharted - always striving to turn "stupid algorithms" into symphonies of creativity.
The tools for posing in stable diffusion are still after the fact. The image is already done.
Why not models oriented towards common fundamental rules and techniques for anatomy, multipoint perspective, guessing color theory and values etc .
Things that would still allow mostly for your own flexibility, subjective decision making for artists to make art easier and render the final image themselves or teach the user through practice so they can draw or paint physically with more confidence with or without a computer? The AI could've stuck to the more skeletal, corrective, measurement and utilitarian aspects, while you would get to do the fun part of rendering what you care about.
Now something like THAT early on would've gotten way more artist support. But nah. Seems more tailored to the idea of fostering a general consoomer's paradise like out of Wall-E with the relative ease of a prompt than something for creation. And whos to say the models and content won't become more inflexible and limiting over time over benign content with the install base assured.
I dunno, the whole rollout could've been rethought, and the economic consequences across all knowledge work stand to be huge.
To skull198: so because they haven't published a mod they're not allowed an opinion? I've never published a mod but I have an opinion on things. Just because they've never made a mod doesn't mean they may be an artist in another aspect. Maybe they're a writer, painter or musician. People are allowed to have opinions on things. For example, I may never have made a mod nor produced an album or painted a portrait but I have got poetry published and yet I enjoy reading AI written poetry. It's pretty random and quite funny at times.
As I stated in a previous post...there are those who make the arguement that "fan art" is just theft of the original. Someone draws Spiderman fanart must be a thief because they're not Steve Ditko (original artist, Stan Lee was the writer) but that's acceptable as a form of art. I'm not saying AI art should get a clear, but it's in it's infacy of creating. Right now it's taking human's work and reproducing it, but maybe one day it'll create it's own. AI is here to stay no matter how much we object to it. AI is in most of our daily lives. Siri and Alexa are AI, we have AI driven cars and trucks. All I see is eventually in the future we'll have a real life version of the game "Detroit: Become Human".
lmfao the seething walls of text ur getting are A+
-Jeffrey.
And frankly, none of us here are qualified to be making any assertions unless we're copyright lawyers. Nexus is just protecting itself under current laws. If they don't handle the DMCA requests they lose their safe harbor provisions which would be catastrophic to the business.
As for the moral and ethical aspect, that's completely subjective but I understand both sides as they both have valid points.
For instance Bethesda only has so much time budget and man power to produce voice lines to a game. Starfield boast a ton of lines but it's still finite. But the possibility to continue to add lines to the game can make the experience more believable and immersive. Voice AI can fill in gaps where needed while adding to an already great experience. So my hope is the ability to use voice AI is not taken away but moderated to keep consistency between the original voice actor and the AI content. I think nexus is handling this in a great way and I hope this method of moderation does not change much.
Side note, If someone goes to a voice actor and says hey you know someone is using your voice, they tend to get defensive by default as if it is something wrong without giving this any thought. So I say to those voice actors give it some thought and see if it's truly detrimental to your career or if it's helpful.
Just be aware, they may not own their own voice. Disney, for example, has a gigantic history of seizing the voice even after death. Sampling a VA without permission may work fine so long as nobody notices you, but The Mouse was using legal action to shut down kindergartens where the kids merely painted murals of their characters.
It's the same reason many people are VERY nervous about AI coming into their own workplaces - if a bot can do it for a fraction of the cost (or even free) and time, then why pay a human worker more, especially when they have to take breaks/sleep/complain/etc? And with vocaloids like Hatsune Miku out there proving that artificial voices can be created, why pay for a voice actor at all? Just hire a skilled programmer to make some vocaloids, then train an AI to use them to voice the lines you want. If you learn the software yourself, you can even re-use old vocaloids by changing their "voice" to something else later.
And sure, there might be some technical issues now, but those are being resolved very rapidly as I type, to the point you may not be able to tell in a few years' time. Even the primitive "deep fakes" we have currently are incredibly convincing unless you're paying attention.
So, no, I don't blame voice actors for getting "defensive" about this any more then I blame anyone else for getting nervous about AI coming to take their jobs in the future. Which, at the risk of straying into hot topics, should be "everyone who works for a living".
90% of malfeasance is wiped out by a bare minimum payment, with the remaining 10% looking to make a profit and therefor rarely released for free.
Meanwhile, we've democratized the process to all but the poorest among us. Which isn't at all the ideal -- the ideal would be money becoming a distant memory in our utopian post-human multi-planet AI-labor love tour. But until then...
At the same time, actually getting AI to produce a usable asset is a long and complicated process. Even if it magically works perfectly with no effort, all of the other work still has to be done by the artist. Rigging, posing, and animating are hard work.
If I decide I want to draw something 3 months later, my mind may use a tiny percentage of that specific art I saw prior; including pieces of everything else it has experienced throughout it's/my lifetime.
Creators create for the love of creation. Creations are just that: creations. Bits and pieces of our memories/experiences, remoulded into something new.
Trying to selfishly hold onto these creations is the opposite of why people create, is it not?
Every industry evolves. Skill is still needed in every evolution. Someone using the tool of AI, is doing what our brains are doing mentioned above and melding their creative juices with a new tool. So it grabs bits and pieces of other work, to create more. Haven't our brains been doing this for centuries?
Of course AI is just another tool- and better a tool that can compensate for weaknesses in a modder's skillset or access to resources like good enough voice actors. The Nexus statement effective bans AI voicework, for instance. Despite the fact that such voicework is entirely legal- speaking in the voice of 'another' (without selling the work in the name of that other) has always been both ethical and lawful in the UK. Can you imagine an actor in the theatre being BANNED or PROSECUTED for sounding too much like another actor? Obviously Nexus thinks they should.
Nexus now bans mods that run contrary to the political agenda of game publishers, and that was the thin end of the wedge. Publishers hate mods, full stop- even Bethesda. Imagining you can please publishers re:mods is just hilarious. Starfield is NOT going to even allow modding- just like Fallout 76.
AI's problem is twofold- ordinary punters are completely mislead with respect to what the tech is really about (no, AI has NOTHING to do with intelligence). Secondly, AI is better than most Humans at most pattern based tasks- thus rendering mid-talent 'artists' of all types redundant. And this second point is what makes certain industry groups squeal so loudly, and think that corrupt politicians can be 'persuaded' to create new laws to protect them (wrong!).
Remember Fleetstreet, and the old 'hot-lead' printing tech that computers rendered obsolete over-night. How those unions kicked and screamed- just like we are seeing entertainment unions do today. And plenty of left-leaning political types back in the day tried to protect the printing unions, for all the wrong reasons.
Pattern processing AI empowers the ordinary person. Which is going to make certain groups very unhappy indeed.
Anyone who’s all for AI generation are the kind of people who’ve never sat down for at least five hours a day & made something, like a short story, a piece of art or music.
Just my thoughts on this, you have your own.
You can either:
a) take it down via spectre & Alliance Military authority.
b) let it slide, but Alliance will be pissed.
Or
c) Shepard allows it to remain, but he/she pretty much gets a highly favourable cut of any profit it makes as a side income where people basically pay to get Shepard.
I think option c is going to be the precedent going forward in the future? VA's loan out thier voice to an AI that they own and create themselves via working with Elevenlabs for example to have an official voice profile they make with them (Think GPS), you pay the VA a subscruption fee and go through proper legal channels via agreeing to an EULA, state what its going to be used for, if it gets approved, you can use their voice for making a mod that adds new lines or restores cut content thereafter.
Also, with AI we now might be able to actually VOICE all mods that already exist. Such a feature already exists with Skyrim, and even freaking Lovers Lab creators utilize it. Making a custom voicepack for a story mod is now available to us. No more cutting and pasting voice files manually to create something that barely resembles human speech.
Another thing: Loading screens. Imagine if instead of one, two or five hand-mades you could have dozens interesting, themed loading screens depending on the location, faction and difficulty settings... and thats just tip of the iceberg here.