Warhammer Maker Games Workshop Bans Its Staff From Using AI In Its Content or Designs 42
Games Workshop, the owner and operator of a number of hugely popular tabletop war games, including Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar, has banned the use of generative AI in its content and design processes. IGN reports: Delivering the UK company's impressive financial results, CEO Kevin Rountree addressed the issue of AI and how Games Workshop is handling it. He said GW staff are barred from using it to actually produce anything, but admitted a "few" senior managers are experimenting with it. Rountree said AI was "a very broad topic and to be honest I'm not an expert on it," then went on to lay down the company line:
"We do have a few senior managers that are [experts on AI]: none are that excited about it yet. 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. 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.
We are allowing those few senior managers to continue to be inquisitive about the technology. 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."
"We do have a few senior managers that are [experts on AI]: none are that excited about it yet. 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. 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.
We are allowing those few senior managers to continue to be inquisitive about the technology. 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."
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(Score:-1, Interesting)
Mixed reviews ...
Smart (Score:5, Insightful)
That way their employees will keep their skills sharp and will things will not grind to a halt when the current AI hype crashes. As it must. Also the only sane way to get junior people up to speed: Have them do things by themselves.
I mean, what are all those that do not hire junior people now "because AI" or have them go all in for AI think will make these junior people competent or into senior people eventually? Right. Some enterprises are currently setting up their demise in 20 years or so. Also note that for many roles you cannot just "get consultants" (which will be in short supply after the crash anyways), because institutional knowledge and specific experience is critical and takes a long time to acquire.
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I see the mindless and deranged AI fans have mod-points again. I do not share your delusions and hallucinations.
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I am not a "detractor". I can just see what is.
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Ein Autofahrer hÃrt ausm Radio: "Ein Geisterfahrer auf der A7!"
Sagt der Fahrer: "Was? Einer? Hunderte!"
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And then you look up why AdHominem arguments do not work and just make you look stupid ...
Here is a simple test you can run if you are interested in some actual insight: What if I was perfectly on target and right? Would that look any different to you?
Re:Smart (Score:4, Interesting)
There is very minimal application for AI for games (be it digital, tabletop, card, or AR/VR)
Like the entire point of a D&D adventure is that you are collectively telling a story. If you let the AI in to tell the story, then it's no longer your story.
There are a few small applications where I feel the AI might be usable however.
a) generating monsters, loot, lore and scenario for a dynamically scoped event. Basically it allows the DM to create a lore-compliant monster at will, how it got here, why it's here, why it's attacking, what loot it has, for an event where none of that information is useful, you just need a quick mook to beat up that is in the way of opening a door. The thing the DM actually has a human written story for is behind the door. You just need the party to "make noise" by attacking the mook so the door is opened from the inside.
b) Generating a dynamic* map, I'll put a star beside this, because this would only work for a situation where you have not planned for the party to go in a direction, and the party insists anyway.
A good DM would not need an AI, and tabletop stuff should never need AI. But if you're running a campaign that people can jump in and out of, it might be useful to track the "history" of the game via specially crafted chatbot that listens to the story but never chats except when a player asks "did that happen?" in which it then says how long ago something happened, and to what player. That's just to keep the players honest and the DM from forgetting.
Re:Smart (Score:4, Interesting)
Like the entire point of a D&D adventure is that you are collectively telling a story. If you let the AI in to tell the story, then it's no longer your story.
Star Trek has for decades portrayed "holonovels" as things that are kind of a mix of novels and video games. A human is behind the idea, the writing, the story, and many of the plot beats. The indivduals characters in the holodeck are AI, but they're also programmed to have certain personalities, goals, behaviors, etc. (See, e.g., Picard and his Dixon Hill holonovels, Tuvok's mutiny holonovel on Voyager, the holonovels that Bashir and O'Brien play through together on DS9, etc.)
People go into the holodeck to experience the holonovel. There are series of holonovels. We see some characters going through the same holonovel multiple times to learn the secrets and to see what else might happen.
Now, this is obviously fictional technology, but as a thought experiment, in this science fiction scenario, would you say that the author of a Holonovel is NOT the author because some of the the individual characters in the story are computer generated and have a degree of freedom within the story?
(I'm totally fine with Warhammer banning AI in their products. I also personally think one can use LLM and other AI tools without losing your humanity.)
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In this ca
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If the customers (who, given that this is a tabletop wargaming thing, skew toward hobby artists more than average) feel that they are being lazily bot slopped; they probably aren't going to be any more willing to pay GW prices rather than going with the assortment of eithe
Copyright (Score:2)
Will be on shaky ground to copyright anything derived from AI.
Even the inference of AI is enough to send some IPs into unknown regions of law.
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And since GW is all about directing as much cash from their cows... I mean customers into their own koffers, we can't jeopardize the copyright. Imagine if someone suddenly could lawfully reproduce their products or worse yet, if people could print the figures themselves.
GW is not about that lifestyle.
a sane approach (Score:4)
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They may just have looked at how much time AI use "saves". The reality is, not a lot. And as soon as you take cost and quality into account, it typically makes things more expensive. Effects of staff experience, stress-levels, slopifications are not yet accounted for in that, and hence the cost disadvantage of using generative AI my even be a lot worse overall than is currently known and established.
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Let's understand that GW has a little bit of luxury here, the sort of cushion you have when your crap is ridiculously overpriced (thus the "robust" results report).
Don't get me wrong, their customers keep buying it so there's that. I'm just not sure I'd be bowled over by the commitment of, say, Rolls Royce to paying for handcrafted work either.
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Across a lot of the "art" related games and crafts, AI has become a one acceptable opinion community. It transitioned from popular virtue signaling to fascism with surprising velocity.
As for t
AAIIS (All AI Is Slop) (Score:1)
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2. "Computer-touchers"? Does that mean IT/CS people, or is it something sexier?
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Well, I guess at least their tech-priests are allowed to use machine spirits as long as they perform the correct rites.
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I can think of a good use for them. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I can think of a good use for them. (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't need AI to find holes in a GW rules set, you just need to play one once :)
The IP issues mentioned above are probably legit: GW exists because it creates a lot of IP and zealously protects it.
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Translated we can't go all exterminatus (Score:3)
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Great, but they still suck (Score:2)
Now if Games Workshop fired all of its lawyers and passed the saving onto the customers so that 5 Space Marines weren't 60 bucks they might start building actual good will!
but what about 3D printers (Score:2)
The biggest threat to Game$$$ Work$$$hop is 3D printing, not AI.