vivdunstan

The IF community is in an existential crisis over the use of generative AI in interactive fiction games, and particularly its use in creative competitions such as IFComp. Here's a good writeup from one of multiple people who've been deterred from participating in IFComp this year, even as a player and judge. https://azhdarchid.com/slop-comes-for-everything-you-love/

I'm opposed to the use of generative AI in creative competitions in general. Partly on philosophical and fairness grounds, but also ethical and environmental reasons. I'm judging IFComp yet again this year - I've been doing this since it started in 1995 - and this year's genAI content is depressing.

Getting beyond exasperated with the number of people on forums and groups I'm on, who reply to questions, needing specialist and reliable knowledge to answer, and post a response from ChatGPT. Usually & consistently wrong. Those folk may learn it's not a good source but others later will use it too.

I'm also beyond exasperated by the misuse of generative AI in creative fields, including art, interactive fiction and writing. I'm also an academic whose own academic writings have been used without my permission to train AI, including for Meta. And then there are the environmental costs. Just stop!

My 88-year-old Mum who's never used a computer or smartphone in her life, and never will, also rants about AI. I'm quite impressed that she knows about it and has enough knowledge to have opinions :)

Incidentally I've been using and involved with some forms of AI since the 1980s. But I really really dislike the modern version and where things are going with it.

After battling to hear and understand the whispered Sea Devil dialogue in a Big Finish audio yesterday a friend kindly suggested that I try an auto transcription service. I've just been trying MacWhisper, which I can run locally on my Mac, no uploading the audio, which I wouldn't be happy with for copyright reasons. And it's done surprisingly well. The large AI audio model (available with a one-off pro purchase) copes best of all. But even the free small model was pretty impressive. Couldn't catch all the Sea Devil dialogue, but still did way better than me. I've now tried it with me blethering at it, and then also transcribing the audio for my 11 minutes talk about my gggg-granddad, Dandie Dinmont Terrier breeder Francis Somner. I'm really impressed with how it managed that last test, the large audio model especially. It even coped with many of the Scottish place names and counties, albeit not all. Definitely a higher level of accuracy than Apple's own internal dictation facility. So yup, I think I will find it useful. Though it was essential that it run locally on my Mac. And for once I am really grateful that I have an extremely whizzy Mac processor wise. Because I really needed it here!

P.S. I never had a script for this talk. I just burbled my way through it, using the PowerPoint slides as my prompts. It is remarkably free of ums and ahs!

IFComp have today added new questions that authors must answer about any use of AI generated content in their works for the imminent competition. I was very pleased to be able to tick the “no AI” option for my game. Not even for the cover art, which I did myself. I am not at all a fan of the use of AI in creative fields like this, whether for text content or art. The human cost to creatives working for a living in these areas is too great, as is the environmental cost of running generative AI queries.