opinions An Overly Long Tangent About AI Generated Content in RP (TM)

[McSpazz]

After some consideration and some recent experiences, I've decided that it's worth tackling this hot button issue: AI generated content. Not only is it not not going anywhere, but the places it can and is being utilized in RP communities is only going to increase.

I'm not going to get into the ethical debate about AI generated content here. Instead, I'm going to focus on three things: a very broad description of how it works, why utilizing it for RP is often not practical, and why I think you should generally avoid using it for anything you want to seriously attach to a character with those difficulties set aside.
 

How it Works

Before I can break down the hurdles of using AI generation in roleplay, it's important for me to explain what is actually going on here because a lot of what I am going to be describing later on is going to be very reliant on understanding the core of what's going on behind the scenes.

AI generation, be it text or image, is, in very simple terms, pattern recognition. While it might be weird to imagine it this way given it is producing something rather than just reporting back patterns, that's, in effect, what is going on. It's just that the patterns are being saved in extremely complex data sets that are processed in less than obvious ways. It has a huge dataset, uses your prompts to figure out what data to use, then uses that filtered data to figure out an output that matches it.

 

Text is a bit easier to grasp, so I'll start with that. Certain words are more likely to follow other words based on the subject at hand. The different tones you get when writing an email to a parent compared to writing an email to your boss is an example of a thin slice of what I mean by this. Certain patterns emerge when you look at text broadly and assigning certain text a label that describes that context can allow AI generation to group together patterns that match your prompt. A prompt focused on a movie description is more likely to include descriptions of excitement, glee, awe, and spectacle while a prompt for a eulogy is  probably going to avoid those things. This is the reason why it is possible to do the process in reverse to determine the likelihood if a given set of text was generated by AI. The more the given text lines up with the highest probable to appear next word, the more likely it is AI.

 

Images and even video are far more complex. With these, you aren't just looking at text but color, shapes, even art styles. The AI isn't storing an image so much as it's storing kind of an impression of what that image is with each image being associated with words that can then be compared to the text prompt. If you provided a prompt that included the tag "in a comic book style", it would utilize training data that has been associated with comic books.
 

Why It Kind'a Sucks for Images

I'm actually going to start with image generation here because, in broad strokes, it's more useful for roleplayers than text generation is. As I made clear at the beginning, I am setting ethical concerns aside for the sake of keeping the comments on this post from becoming a COMPLETE mess. However, even with ethical concerns aside, most AI image generation has a very critical flaw that is especially a problem for the wild world of City of Heroes.

 

It only knows what it is trained on.

 

AI image generation has no issues generating images of characters that fit standard designs or have common features, but it can start to really struggle once you start moving away from the norm. In fact, the stuff that it outputs can often really show the biases in the training data. Just as an example, an SG I was in was using AI image generation to make ID pictures of our characters and while the person doing it had no problems making a guy look really scruffy, it had a really hard time generating a woman with light scarring.

 

That means that its ability to generate an image doesn't just change from one image generator to the next, but also between art styles within the same image generator. The more you struggle to get an image close to what you want, the more likely you will be unable to accurately recreate the character's appearance in another pose and/or setting. That means that when presenting these images, not only does it become fairly obvious you used AI generation, but it can lead to a very imprecise idea of what your character actually looks like which is generally the point of having the reference image/art created in the first place.

 

Because of all of that, images you produce are likely going to struggle to maintain a cohesive vision in terms of style, fine details, or precise character design. Even small details in an image can lend itself to a certain feel or style. You can tell an AI to make something in the style of Tim Burton, but everything it gives you is going to be, in some way, based on existing images containing Tim Burton's style. It can't diverge from what exists which means that trying to implement your own twist won't be possible.

 

However, as I said, it's not terrible at making reference images for characters. It's just that you're really not going to be able to keep the design consistent from one image to the next.
 

Why It Really Sucks for Text

The bigger issue I have and caution against in most circumstances, however, is text generation. As I explained earlier, all AI content is generated via pattern recognition. Each word that is chosen is determined not by any concept of style or understanding of flow but, rather, what the algorithm has determined to be the most likely to come next. This can produce text that, often, on the surface, looks totally fine. However, AI text often has quirks that make the output kind of weird to read or even entirely miss the point of your prompt. I could go over all of the smaller particulars of the AI generated text for fiction, but there are two that stand out.

 

The first is that, as I said before, AI only "knows" what it is trained on. If you prompt it to write something that is extremely uncommon to exist in the written form, it's going to struggle. Just as an example, infecting someone with a virus to kill another virus but remain in the body afterwards and not actually cure them is a REALLY weird scenario. The vast majority of content the AI would pull from to write that kind of scene would be in medical settings and the idea of treating someone with a virus without curing them can end up confusing the AI, resulting in contradictory sentences.

 

The second is that AI, at the time of writing, doesn't really have a memory. If it doesn't exist in the prompt and its training data doesn't have a clear idea of what to put next (such as when it is creating an explanation for something from Wikipedia), anything it generates may or may not be referenced at a later time in a way that makes sense. The longer the output the more likely this is to happen. AI cannot comprehend Chekolv's gun unless it was told to utilize it in the prompt. The prompt and the training data are all that matter. That means that the generated text can repeat itself, bring up concepts and then never use them again, or utilize far more detail than it needs to because it only recognizes patterns and humans sure seem to like their adjectives.

 

Not having a real memory also makes it impossible to do any kind of follow-up story that makes full use of the story that came before and is entirely incapable of making all characters retain a consistent personality unless you are very careful about how you explain them in the prompt which can become next to impossible if other people's characters are involved.
 

Why I Recommend Against It

Even if you were able to overcome those major hurdles I explained above, there is a far deeper reason why I feel you should avoid using any AI generation for your roleplay. Again, even setting ethics aside, I don't feel it's in your best interest to get into the habit.

Put simply: you cannot learn how to do something well if someone else is doing something for you.

 

I know not everyone is an artist and some people just really, really want reference pictures for their characters. I still encourage people to learn to draw themselves or commission someone who can, but, as I see it, the only major arguments against ever using AI images aside from the issues I mentioned above are based around ethical considerations.

 

However, text generation is another matter entirely. We are roleplaying in a text based medium and, as a result, the core of what we are doing is writing. Writing your own stories and text is important for the same reason that tracing images is frowned upon in the art world. You aren't really understanding why certain things are done and, also importantly, you aren't actually formulating your own style. Quirks for characters, little details about their possessions, what their home looks like that sets it apart from others, all of this can get totally missed if you just throw together prompts and literally rely on the more likely scenarios to carry you through.

 

Lastly, of course, is that the discovery you are generating text for roleplay could be considered immensely insulting to everyone else involved. If you are not clear from the get go that you are generating and (hopefully) editing the text, it could appear that you aren't interested in fully engaging with the other players or are just doing the absolute minimum. Everyone else has shown up and are putting in the effort to try and build something together, why not you? In effect: why roleplay with me at all if you aren't going to be writing anything?

Conclusion

Look, I'm not your mom, dad, uncle, or even your boss. In all, I don't feel the time saved by generating text with an AI is worth the trade offs and you'd be better off saving up for a talented artist to draw your character to your specifications. All of this, once again, before we even get to the ethical considerations.

 

If you insist on using AI, try and use it in a limited scope. Maybe use it to spitball ideas or, if necessary, help establish a starting point. Regardless, you'd still be better off as a writer and roleplayer to just do it yourself. Your ideas are worth more than the most likely scenario.
 

 

This post is tangentially part of my series talking about roleplaying! You can see the full list of posts Here!

[Latex]

My view is that AI is a tool, it's like Adobe Photoshop, an Excel Spreadsheet, Google Docs, Spellchecker... Vidiot Maps, it isn't currently capable of outdoing a Human at any task, if it was it would be labelled an AGI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence)

GPT4 is starting to blur the lines when it comes to writing, but it's a long ways off being an AGI. You can usually tell when something has been filtered through an AI it does follow a certain 'style' of writing because that's what it's algorithm does. People are often very quick to denounce 'new tools' and this is the first major one for a while; "Video Killed the Radio Star".

What AI is fantastic at for Roleplay are a few things;
Brainstorming Ideas -
+ If I've writers block or I'm really struggling with an idea AI can help get me out of it. It's exactly the same approach as googling to research things.
+ Very rarely is there an idea that hasn't been done before, AI usually has something to call back on.
- Overuse can be soullessly generic.
 

Crossing Language Barriers -
+ For flavour I often add some Korean for my Korean characters, AI is literally a Google Search in a more fluid format customised to me.
- Translations might be clean and generic, AI veers away from anything controversial usually.
 

Sketches/Decent Art -
+ With some clever prompts you can quickly add custom images to your blurbs or use it to brainstorm.
+ It's as easy as a button click on some websites.
+ No cost associated, no wait times.
- Often struggles with details that are very distinct to your character.
- Will never be as custom as a character commission.

I disagree quite strongly on the idea of not using AI to enhance your ideas, if you treat AI as a tool to create you will have no problem, it's when you substitute your creativity for AI completely that it stands out. As with everything in modern society it's about access and convenience and AI is excellent at both.

On the topic of AI art I probably offer a rarer perspective because I've worked with dozens of artists in the past and spent four figures on custom art. AI just isn't there yet when it comes to bespoke/custom pieces, but then the cost of commissions has skyrocketed since the days of 'MMOArt' (who often done many a piece for City of Heroes way back then). The same artpiece that cost $100 then would be $250-$600 now, as getting a commission of your character rose in popularity (on the quality of MMOArt), so did the price. It seemed inevitable to me - as someone that commissioned a lot of artists - that the bubble was going to burst at some point, however, well known popular artists still have client backlog and 6 month wait times to get a $250 art piece despite the arrival of AI art some of which even rips off their style.
 

Edited August 27 by Latex

[kito]

I'm way on the pro AI. Just want 30 images for some fake FB postes or something ai is there. Want a well done custom artwork of your OC with all the love you would want. Commissions. 

 

Don't like to wright large descriptive paragraph long explanations of an environment. Get ai to make something and then add in the important detail you have or change it around to match some. 

 

Everyone has blind spots to rp, or even just some extra work they hate/dread but love the rest of it. like maybe they don't want to make 3 page long office rp memo notes that players could read if they wanted.   

 

Obviously if you are only using Ai your not rping anyway. But chat gpt and a accent translator are the same kind of tool for me.

 

[Oz The Elderly Gaymer]

I really didn't even know that AI text RP was a thing. i mean, I've seen ChatGPT being used for things like song lyrics and whatnot.  

 

I guess that whether we even use AI tools or not depends on where our strengths are, so to speak. I'll be the first to admit it - give me a compelling character concept and I'll bury you under backstory, motivations, romance short stories, etc etc etc etc.  So I wouldn't need an AI to generate backstory, but not everyone is prone to pages and pages of pseudoscience word spew like I am.  If someone wants to use an AI tool to come up with a broad framework for a character's background, and then 'personalize' it to suit their tastes, I don't see the harm.   Especially if the alternative is no backstory at all, IMO.

 

Now, artwork? Yeah, I can't draw to save my life. Fortunately I've been able to build a small group of excellent artists that I've commissioned and maintained contact over the years. But I'm also privileged enough to be able to afford such a commission, since they can definitely get into the hundreds of dollars - something that a lot of people probably can't justify spending.  I've used AI visual tools to generate images 'on the fly' for TTRPG game sessions I've run, and I think there's some real utility for those tools in that regard.

 

Full disclosure - my pfp is, in fact, AI-generated. My go-to artist is currently recovering from Long Covid and my pfp commission is on indefinite hold.

 

[UltraAlt]

On 8/23/2024 at 4:37 PM, McSpazz said:

Each word that is chosen is determined not by any concept of style or understanding of flow

 

I don't think this is true.

I believe that you can ask some AIs to write something in the style of a certain author or a person's general speech pattern.

You can give AIs the same kind of prompt for artwork asking for the art to be in the style of certain artist. (I know that this goes on as a friend used this kind of prompt for his icon here on the forums).

[McSpazz]

@Latex: I largely agree with you. As I said, the issues I have with AI art generation are mainly related to ethics. To clarify: I don't think you should RELY on AI for coming up with ideas. As you said, the biggest issue is when you use it as a substitute rather than a jumping off point. Also, I encourage people to commission. Obviously, not everyone can afford it and I respect that. There are definitely utilities to AI and using it for translation is definitely way up there.

 

---

 

10 hours ago, kito said:

Don't like to wright large descriptive paragraph long explanations of an environment. Get ai to make something and then add in the important detail you have or change it around to match some. 

 

Everyone has blind spots to rp, or even just some extra work they hate/dread but love the rest of it. like maybe they don't want to make 3 page long office rp memo notes that players could read if they wanted.   

 

Obviously if you are only using Ai your not rping anyway. But chat gpt and a accent translator are the same kind of tool for me.

 

As I said, if you are not good at something, getting AI to do it for you will not help you get any better at it. If you don't like to write long descriptive paragraphs explaining the environment, you CAN theoretically use AI, but that just kicks the underlying issue down the road. AI does serve as a shortcut to help bypass things you don't like to do or are not good at in roleplay, but that misses the point of my core complaints with using them in the first place.

If you just need a quick description for something offhand, fine. Your reference to long office memos is a good example of where AI might be well suited. However, if they're important to the story, I feel my points still apply.

And, again, relying on AI for the core of your writing basically ensures that those aspects of writing will remain blind spots. Artists usually hate drawing hands, but you can be sure that if they can just generate hands, they'll probably never get good at doing it themselves.
 

---

 

1 hour ago, Oz The Elderly Gaymer said:

I really didn't even know that AI text RP was a thing. i mean, I've seen ChatGPT being used for things like song lyrics and whatnot.  

 

I guess that whether we even use AI tools or not depends on where our strengths are, so to speak. I'll be the first to admit it - give me a compelling character concept and I'll bury you under backstory, motivations, romance short stories, etc etc etc etc.  So I wouldn't need an AI to generate backstory, but not everyone is prone to pages and pages of pseudoscience word spew like I am.  If someone wants to use an AI tool to come up with a broad framework for a character's background, and then 'personalize' it to suit their tastes, I don't see the harm.   Especially if the alternative is no backstory at all, IMO.

For the life of me, I can not recall any point in more than a decade I have ever seen a character that had no backstory. I've seen characters with simple backstories and characters that had basically no backstory and built it up over time through organic roleplay, but no backstory? That'd be a new one to me. I don't think the alternative to not using AI to generate a backstory is no backstory, I think it's more likely going to be a simple one that you end up building up over time. If anything, I think that not entirely fleshing out your backstory if you don't have a clear idea of the finer details is a good thing because it means that, if you become inspired later, you can fill it in without retconning.

 

---

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

I don't think this is true.

I believe that you can ask some AIs to write something in the style of a certain author or a person's general speech pattern.

You can give AIs the same kind of prompt for artwork asking for the art to be in the style of certain artist. (I know that this goes on as a friend used this kind of prompt for his icon here on the forums).

 

You can ask an AI to write in the style of a specific author or the speech pattern of some nebulous person ONLY if the training model has been trained on data that matches the prompt. The AI does not know why something is styled a certain way or why certain patterns exist. It only knows that certain data associated with the prompt you have given it has certain patterns. The actual style that it expresses is solely based on its training data. It is not, as of now, capable of creating a new style as generative AI is generated off of its training data and its training data alone. In order for it to have any concept of style or an understanding of what flows well, it would need to have generalized intelligence which is not what's going on here.

The exact same thing is going on with AI image generation. The AI generator has no idea what it means for something to be in the style of, say, Picasso. It doesn't understand his motivations for drawing things in certain ways and it can't generate any images in Picasso's style unless it has been fed a large number of images that are in Picasso's style and has a set of images that match the rest of the prompt you want the item to be created in using that style.

Edited August 28 by McSpazz

[Latex]

I used AI recently and it's been an immense help, got into Dungeons and Dragons last year, a setting that has 50+ years of lore. When you ask GPT4 to quote only canon quotes from certain editions (and link the sources it gets them from) you can very quickly learn habits, religious beliefs, magic, backstories, world stories for your character in 10 minutes oppose to 10 hours. For examples sake 'What sort of world history would be prevalent to my Tiefling in 5e? How old do Tieflings live for? What is their view of outsiders?' etc. 

It's a Google search that is faster, smarter and more apt at condensing exactly what you need, exactly why Google now has Gemini (their own AI) built-in to search.

On the topic of artstyles it's a roundabout way of a Human way of thinking, almost all art is influenced by other art/ideas it goes deeper with writing. I know some models are trained on very specific styles, you can use multiple models to blend two (or more) styles together; thus creating a new style, I know you can do it with AI art (I've done it), seems likely it's been done with writing styles too. I think this is being overlooked, AI can actually generate it's own ideas using a mash-up of several models that are trained on several different artists, e.g. what do you get when you have 50% Picasso and 50% van Gogh, you get something 'new'.

The best AI artworks still require human editing and input, many 'AI Artists' (I can feel the anti-AI crowd cringing at that term) use inpainting A LOT, this is a technique with AI to select an area that needs to be re-generated, but only that area. Even with that though, AI still doesn't capture the smaller details of YOUR character, it can capture the details of A character but not your specific idea. I don't think it ever will until it can perfectly read a character reference sheet like an artist can.

Edited August 29 by Latex

[McSpazz]

10 hours ago, Latex said:

IOn the topic of artstyles it's a roundabout way of a Human way of thinking, almost all art is influenced by other art/ideas it goes deeper with writing. I know some models are trained on very specific styles, you can use multiple models to blend two (or more) styles together; thus creating a new style, I know you can do it with AI art (I've done it), seems likely it's been done with writing styles too. I think this is being overlooked, AI can actually generate it's own ideas using a mash-up of several models that are trained on several different artists, e.g. what do you get when you have 50% Picasso and 50% van Gogh, you get something 'new'.

The best AI artworks still require human editing and input, many 'AI Artists' (I can feel the anti-AI crowd cringing at that term) use inpainting A LOT, this is a technique with AI to select an area that needs to be re-generated, but only that area. Even with that though, AI still doesn't capture the smaller details of YOUR character, it can capture the details of A character but not your specific idea. I don't think it ever will until it can perfectly read a character reference sheet like an artist can.

I agree with your comments related to AI being able to serve as a better Google in some instances but I take some issues here.

If you want to get very literal, yes. Telling an AI to take two existing styles and blend them together does make a "new style". However, remember that AI is incapable of generating anything that it hasn't been given training data on. That's why I do not believe that this is, in anyway, similar to a human way's of thinking. Children come up with ideas from whole cloth all the time without any reference material and while people might say there's nothing original anymore, humans don't need to be trained to come up with new ideas. They just do it. The creativity of an AI model is entirely reliant on the data it is fed.

I'm not even arguing that you can create beautiful images with AI. My original post was strictly talking about how AI works and what I believe to be its limitations as far as roleplay is concerned. I'm not here to argue if AI is art or if AI images are easy to create.

In short, very strictly speaking, my issues with AI images for roleplay is that you are likely going to struggle to get an AI image to match your character design if they have an outlandish design and you are going to struggle to make any image of that character consistent between images; especially if they have an outlandish design.

[Andreah]

I currently use LLM Chat-AI's quite a lot in my writing. Yet, almost nothing I post as RP for my characters has been written by AI. To me, it is presently a tool, not a replacement. Mine is a multi-shot process, starting from the abstract and general, making me think about foundations. I iterate with it to provide a general framework to assemble my creation in. It holds parts together, set boundaries, provides material, points out issues. It brainstorms with me as my partner, but I remain fully in control. I feed it background materials, and it mulls them over, identifying inconsistencies or narrative opportunities. It tests me, by request. It asks what my purpose is with each part, helping me trim excesses; it ponders the holes, and asks whey they are empty. It suggests alternatives, and accepts my revisions without question or ego.  AI is a fine servant.

[Andreah]

I use https://www.nomic.ai/gpt4all with either Llama3 8B Instruct (overall the best small model I've found) or Nous Hermes 2 Mistral DPO (when I need a fully uncensored model for writing projects which include violence). Both are decently good models with high performance on a normal desktop. I use the GPT4All local files facility, and scraped the CoH Homecoming wiki for zone and enemy group info, and included the CoH bible PDF's as well.

Edited August 30 by Andreah

[kito]

On 8/28/2024 at 1:07 PM, McSpazz said:

@Latex

 

---

 

 

As I said, if you are not good at something, getting AI to do it for you will not help you get any better at it. If you don't like to write long descriptive paragraphs explaining the environment, you CAN theoretically use AI, but that just kicks the underlying issue down the road. AI does serve as a shortcut to help bypass things you don't like to do or are not good at in roleplay, but that misses the point of my core complaints with using them in the first place.

If you just need a quick description for something offhand, fine. Your reference to long office memos is a good example of where AI might be well suited. However, if they're important to the story, I feel my points still apply.

And, again, relying on AI for the core of your writing basically ensures that those aspects of writing will remain blind spots. Artists usually hate drawing hands, but you can be sure that if they can just generate hands, they'll probably never get good at doing it themselves.
 

---

 

 

 

Again, you might just not like doing it. this is a hobby or just fun for most people, if you only like to paint trees saying well you should paint everything to get you skills up is not overly helpful. 

 

Yes writing more descriptive scenarios will make you better at it. Does not mean you like to do it. Maybe you just like making the story and not explaining the rooms. Or giving NPCs personality and backstories. 

 

Also sorry latex I was not able to delete the @  you in the quote  

[McSpazz]

39 minutes ago, kito said:

Again, you might just not like doing it. this is a hobby or just fun for most people, if you only like to paint trees saying well you should paint everything to get you skills up is not overly helpful. 

 

Yes writing more descriptive scenarios will make you better at it. Does not mean you like to do it. Maybe you just like making the story and not explaining the rooms. Or giving NPCs personality and backstories. 

AI has existed for, what, two years now? Literally, not long ago, if you did not like doing something in art, you either did not do it or you tried to get better at it. That was it.

If you sucked at drawing hands, you either got better at it or got creative and found ways around not drawing hands. If you hated giving NPC's backstories, you could limit the number of NPC's you created and focus on making a few really good ones. On and on. You improvised, you found ways to adapt to your limitations, you got better. All of this improved more than just your skill in one thing. Learning to do things you don't like doing can improve your ability to do things you do enjoy.

And if you couldn't do that, you literally did what you could do. If you only like to paint trees, you paint trees. Hell, I myself fall under one of your examples. I struggle with making and balancing NPCs. I don't fault people for using AI to make up for their deficiencies, but I think something is missed if you do. Learning to overcome those weak points, be it by getting better, finding work arounds, or simply finding ways to avoid them all together, are all important aspects of improving as an artist.

 

Which is what you are. Roleplayers are artists. Roleplaying is a form of creative writing and even improvisational acting, both of which are artistic disciplines.

 

Which is why I find the argument that this is just a hobby and just for fun so weak. Because, yeah, it is, but who the hell does a hobby or does something for fun but not actually fully participate in it? Something I've seen brought up time and time again so far is that the problem is when AI takes the place of the creative process and your own input, but that's what I've been arguing from the start. If tracing images is a tool for artists, why do artists get angry when an artist is revealed to have traced everything?

 

It's because they weren't really participating in their art. Because, after a certain point, just tracing images doesn't really teach you that much and you aren't developing your own style.

 

The same applies to roleplay and simply using AI to bypass having to learn to do things you don't like means that you are actively doing things to bypass the entire learning process. My line for AI in roleplay is filling in things that aren't overly important or completing overly repetitive tasks. Is the janitor's closet an important room for you to describe from ceiling to floor? No, probably not. I'd be fine with AI being used for that. The office of the big bad guy? The details in that room will actually matter and that's when it's important that a roleplayer knows how to describe a room. If you don't know how to describe a room well, how can you know when an AI does it poorly? How do you handle hallucinations or misunderstandings?

 

We aren't talking about a sewing machine replacing seamster. We're talking about people using a technology to try and replace the need to utilize their own creativity. Something you can only enhance if you actively express and challenge yourself. Utilizing AI for writing in RP is actively going to hinder your ability to get better at. I've seen the kind of stuff AI can generate when someone tries to use it to make up for their own shortcomings rather than improve on them. It's really obvious and, honestly, I'd prefer they tried and sucked than give me something I can tell they barely even edited if not barely read.

Edited August 31 by McSpazz

[Crystal Dragon]

As someone that does use AI for various different purpose I'd like to add to this conversation a few key notes that people are missing with this discussion here.

1. Using AI to respond to RP posts is like using canned meat for a recipe that requires fresh meat, it's not going to taste the same when the meal is ready, and definitely going to look different as well. If you lack the time and patience to actually formulate posts by hand, or need help with finding a certain word or phrase, fine, use it for that, it's basically a search engine  for that purpose as well. But don't use it to craft responses because honestly, it's not going to incorporate your own sense of creativity involved, it's just going to be a tin-canned version of what you seek to detail or reply with.
2. Many of the responses here, I'm going to admit, make me cringe at the lack of full comprehension of what Spazzy is trying to state here. REALLY READ IT PLEASE and comprehend what he's trying to explain before you continue further to tear apart this post. His reasoning and breakdown for this is valid as hell, and I respect his willingness to approach this subject from this direction of teaching and why AI in this particular area of game play is not just disrespectful to those that do not use AI for responses, but also towards the authors and book writers of this community that do indeed take the time to write and detail responses in a way that tailors to their characters persona. If my stating this upsets you, perhaps you need to take a step to really read the full context and not get riled up about the subject itself but rather what he's saying in explanation about the usage of AI in this manner of play. There is no spirit or actual emotion drawn from AI responses, even in the creative line of use, so it has no way to determine whether the response it's written FOR YOU is within the sense you are trying to convey or not without explicitly clear definitions, and even then, it still comes out somewhat tin-can in flavoring.
3. It is a creative art, a hobby, and for some an inspiration for the books and novels they are writing currently. If you do not have time to construct posts and replies on your time playing, then don't, excuse yourself from the scene and let others join instead. It's not up to the person that initiates to push you to write, that's on you completely.

Edited August 31 by Crystal Dragon
Just one more point to add.

[McSpazz]

I just want to reiterate something after Crys' post.

My issue with AI is not, in of itself, its usage. Again, ethical concerns aside (for which there are many), I can see many uses in roleplay. Acting as a springboard for ideas, helping form a foundation for a concept, describing scenarios that are unimportant to the core scenario, and so on.

 

My concern, if you want to boil it down to its absolute core, is that AI is insufficient as a long term solution to making up for a roleplayer's own deficiencies and can prevent a roleplayer from attempting to improve in where they need the most work.

Just as an example, part of what makes hands so difficult to draw isn't just their multi-jointed construction but also how even small errors in establishing depth can entirely bork their presentation. Roleplay isn't just a creative medium, it is also one that doesn't allow for long pauses (at least where MMO RP is concerned). MMO roleplay, in terms of how quickly you can access and utilize your skillset, is unmatched. Tabletop game roleplay might be immediate, but there is generally more allowances given given the physical presence or simulated presence at play. MMO roleplay hits kind of a sweet spot of having time to consider how you are going to reply and also not having time to spare to write out your answer.

 

That's why substituting AI in roleplay is so hazardous and why I am being so insistent on people learning as much as they can without assistance from AI. The skills you can learn from roleplaying without AI are invaluable for a creative writer and are often essential to a roleplayer's development.

 

If you have no interest in improving as a writer in every respect you are capable, I struggle to understand what draws you to the hobby of MMO RP in the first place.

[Crystal Dragon]

I would recommend those that DO use it for this purpose to please keep in mind that editing to preference of what you are trying to convey would be highly suggested as well as encouraging learning from the AI's word choices, and understanding what it is spouting out. It doesn't always come up with the most logical path for responses, even with the creative slant amped up on the module scales, but it does provide a bit of definition insight that can help improve your own personal writing skills over time. Just don't use it as a crutch, that's all I have to say on that.

[Greycat]

My two cents?

 

I've played with AI a little. For image generation... blah. Just not fond of it. I've wanted to see what it would do with a character description and had it decide "purple hair" meant a purple superbikini outfit and get "hung up" on that to the point of extreme annoyance... that's without going into the whole "what it was trained on and who has rights to it" thing.

 

For writing - well, I write. I have ideas. Reading what AI comes up with is... obviously AI. Even the "good" ones seem to have an AI feel. HOWEVER, if you don't use it as a text generator, but an *idea* generator... well, I don't know if anyone ever used the "They fight crime!" website. It (or one of them) used to just take a list of words, slap them together into two... fairly unlikely "buddy cop" type partners and spit it out. Some friends and I used this to create a group, even. I don't remember what the full result was, but we had "He's a fast talking werewolf sorcerer with a robot buddy named Sparky, fleeing from a secret government program.  She's a (something, it could spit out things like "a grizzled demonic fashionista with a taste for fast cars." I don't remember what the actual prompt was.) Together, they fight crime!"

 

... if anyone  met Lucky Murphy, well, yeah. That's where he came from.

 

I'd say "Don't use AI to do the work," but if you want to use it to come up with prompts, be they for characters, just busting through writer's block, etc? For *that* I tend to see it as an evolved version of that same site.  "I have a story about a fireball-weilding hero who must save someone, but cannot use his powers or innocents will be harmed. I need to introduce a group to assist him with this. Give me ten prompts of paragraph length with ways to approach this." Then pick and choose, facepalm, share for laughs...

[Paragon Vanguard]

Absolutely not a fan of AI writing. Not in any sense. You do not have to be good at something for me to enjoy it, you simply have to be genuine. RP and Creative Writing is not meant to be perfect, its meant to be yours. I don't see how one can take any pride in something that someone else or something else wrote, even in part. To be honest, until now, I did not know that was even a thing in this community. Very disappointing.

 

With that said, not hating on anyone. I know there are always reasons, even exceptions. It's just my 2 cents, which is not worth a dime. 🙂

[McSpazz]

5 hours ago, Krimson said:

You can add characters who are not the players. When I run City of Heroes AI, I often use it to converse with NPCs.

I think what Greycat was getting at is that the responses usually have some weird qualities that stand out the longer you use the bot. The responses are all based on the training data and patterns and the more organic you want a character to sound, the more processing power and memory it requires to work out. The result is that, more often than not, the options most people have available for AI text generation is going to, like Crystal said, sound canned.

[McSpazz]

1 minute ago, Krimson said:

Unlike humans the AI on my computer is ready when I am. I don't have to deal with SGs or Cliques and their associated drama. I don't have to deal with people being disruptive for the sake of being disruptive. That's the advantage. AI is available. I don't have to worry if AI likes me. 

I mean, okay. But at that point, you aren't roleplaying in the collaborative sense. You aren't participating in roleplay in the sense that people in CoH do. What you're doing reminds me of people who play RPG's and write their own little head cannon of what's happening in the game in their head. That's fine and it is, in a sense, kind of roleplay.

 

But I think the vast majority of people here who have issues with AI in roleplay aren't thinking about roleplaying with literally nobody else and just a chat bot. We're talking about the collaborative practice of roleplay. The kind that generally requires a person on the other end. The kind where the quality of your own writing is just as important to your own experience as it is everyone else. If you find an AI chat bot preferrable to the company of other people, I shudder to imagine what kind of drama you've been through to make a soulless bot preferential to the potential of conflict.

[Crystal Dragon]

5 hours ago, Krimson said:

You can add characters who are not the players. When I run City of Heroes AI, I often use it to converse with NPCs.

Blue, with all due respect, it's not a matter of AI engines being used for personal story writing. It's a matter of using whatever the AI spits out to talk to fellow players. And yes, there's been a few instances this has popped up, IN GAME not on an AI client. Edit: I sometimes use AI chat clients too, just because I'm bored out of my mind and had an idea for a story thread and wanted to see how it flows for possibly player interaction, but I don't use what I pick up from the AI chatbots in game. It's just something I use to help me figure out a formulate what works best for the approach I'm wanting to run with.

Edited September 6 by Crystal Dragon
Adding two more cents to the dime there.

[McSpazz]

1 hour ago, Krimson said:

Language models have a context limit. If you break it you get nonsense. The one I use can handle 32k Tokens though I have it set to 16k.

I am aware. That means that you have 32k tokens to try and establish the context and characters. Every qualifier, every detail, every single one takes up tokens. The more characters, the less it has to work with. Incidental NPC's still take up tokens and potentially memory or, alternatively, they don't and any important details they mentioned are completely forgotten and you have to literally remind the AI as to the reality of things. The more you establish ahead of time, the fewer tokens and the less flexibility it really has.

 

None of this changes my criticisms of AI's propensity to forget details, hallucinate, and just generally use stilted dialogue and struggle with concepts that are well outside of its training data. If you train the model using lore from CoH, it will remember that lore very well. However, if, in the course of an RP, you somehow do something that interferes with that training data, it will begin to struggle to retain that the longer you go on. As I said, the only thing that matters is the training data and the prompt. Generative AI, as of now, cannot adaptively learn things as the information it has to balance is altered.

 

Put simply, the current technology does not allow for clean, consistent dialogue. I'm not interested in arguing what generative AI can become because I'm trying to advise people on where AI is right now. Put simply, based on how things are currently looking, I would be astonished if generative AI is capable of becoming any NPC with a given set of training data and world info due to the root data used for training starting to run thin and barely able to support what is currently cutting edge.

 

1 hour ago, Krimson said:

Not yet. There's some setup I would need to make an AI world multi-player. I can run it myself but the tech needs to advance more. 

I mean. Okay. But you would still have the exact same issues with generative AI that exists single player. Again, I've tested this out and found that I can flat out say: "X is true", get it to confirm X is true, and then some time later it says that X is not true and never has been. You could run a freeform Discord text RP with several friends set in City of Heroes and use generative AI to spit out descriptions for areas already in game (if that happens to be part of your training data). Sure, you'd have to write the NPC's, but they'd probably be more interesting and sensical than what a generative AI could randomly spit out.

[Latex]

It's a tool at the end of the day and you will see much more of it, including in entertainment and gaming especially.

I don't really agree with the idea that using AI doesn't help people learn (in some examples I seen RP crop up) I guarantee that if spellchecker was a function in the City of Heroes chatbox - it is a thing in some social MMOs - that people would use it, because that too is a tool. Buuuuuut using AI to fully substitute all of your creativity and RP defeats the purpose of having the hobby in the first place, no different to an actor hiring a robot to act their roles in movies for them, it's redundant and a silly concept to even entertain and you can harken this to modern CGI that feels 'soulless', it is very easy to spot bad CGI, and very difficult (and expensive) to hide it.

I believe AI will end up eventually in the same place as Practical Effects > CGI does in cinema, the machine lacks soul, something instinctual that we can't quite explain but can feel when a design or idea is born, 'it has soul'.
AI will one day very likely end up AGI which is an AI smarter than us, but not by magnitudes, countries across the world are racing toward that. Not to get conspiratorial but for all people know things could already be written, made, played by an AI blurring the lines so well you cannot tell at all, look at the 'Dead Internet Theory' and that kinda thing. 

Pulling back on topic...
I really don't get people that would use AI to fully RP, their only actions being a copy and paste. Bizarre. At that point it's not a tool, you're not using the AI to help create something, you're allowing the AI to fully create it and practically removing yourself from the Roleplay. I mean, I've had RP where the characters write themselves which is weird to say considering I'm the one typing, but sometimes there is no thought process in a reply, it's just 'what the character would do' and for me, that's when RP hits right.