For the lion’s share of companies, there seem to be two schools of thought around generative AI: 1) We’re gonna add it to everything, customer sentiment be damned, and then we’re gonna be rich, rich, rich, or 2) Of course we’re wary of AI’s implications, but c'maahn I'm just a little guy, it's also my birthday, I'm a little birthday boy. I’d like to personally commend Games Workshop and Bandcamp for bucking this trend.
The former, which makes Warhammer, said as part of its recent financial results that while a few senior managers at the company are well-versed in AI and have been given free rein to be “inquisitive” about potential usage, “none are that excited about it yet,” and it’s banned otherwise.
“We have agreed an internal policy to guide us all, which is currently very cautious e.g. we do not allow AI generated content or AI to be used in our design processes or its unauthorized use outside of GW including in any of our competitions,” said CEO Kevin Rountree (via IGN). “We also have to monitor and protect ourselves from a data compliance, security and governance perspective; the AI or machine learning engines seem to be automatically included on our phones or laptops whether we like it or not.”
He added that “we have also agreed we will be maintaining a strong commitment to protect our intellectual property and respect our human creators. In the period reported, we continued to invest in our Warhammer Studio – hiring more creatives in multiple disciplines from concepting and art to writing and sculpting. Talented and passionate individuals that make Warhammer the rich, evocative IP that our hobbyists and we all love.”
Bandcamp, one of the few services that still tries to help musicians make money, took things a step further, announcing this week that music generated “wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted.” AI impersonations of existing artists are also not allowed.
“We believe that the human connection found through music is a vital part of our society and culture, and that music is much more than a product to be consumed,” the company wrote. “It’s the result of a human cultural dialog stretching back before the written word. Similarly, musicians are more than mere producers of sound. They are vital members of our communities, our culture, and our social fabric. Bandcamp was built to directly connect artists and their fans, and to make it easy for fans to support artists equitably so that they can keep making music.”
Bandcamp’s stance is a crucial one as the popularity of AI-generated music, regrettably, explodes. Take, for example, neo-soul artist Sienna Rose, who has three songs in the Spotify top 50 despite not existing. “She,” unfortunately, is just the tip of the iceberg. This does not mean AI has reached a standard of quality such that it’s an acceptable substitute for art made by people with hopes, dreams, and, well, souls; rather, decades of paint-by-numbers pop formulated by the same nine producers and the hyper-commercialization of music by services like Spotify – turning artists’ blood, sweat, and tears into disposable background noise – have primed people to accept watered-down, machine-made gruel. It’s not unlike the way SEO and algorithms turned numerous websites into barely sentient content mills before AI swooped in and finished the job. The powers that be have been trying to build this world for decades. AI was just the missing puzzle piece.
All we can do now is support the people and organizations that prioritize authentic human ingenuity while doing the slow, hard work of constructing something, anything, better than the modern internet – preferably somewhere else.
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Luke Plunkett
