i feel this needs to be addressed. what are they?

We've had generative music here before. I have no problem with it as long as the user posting the entry is accurately represented.

If you can't tell what songs your AI learned from enough to edit the output if it rips something off, you should not use an AI.

If you make a post with unedited output from that Google thing, we will be able to tell. If you make a post that is Microsoft Songsmith output, we will be able to tell. The normal voting process can determine if that is a bad decision or not, because depending on the compo, that kind of thing might be funny as hell and score well because of it.

Personally, I think anything made with AI should be illegal, frowned upon and banned. The art community out there is already struggling enough with this. Artists are being fired and replaced with AI. Do we want to be a group that thinks this is fine?

Art is a thought process. You learn the tools, decide what you'll do with them and develop your own style.

ai is a big and complicated thing atm

i think the only time ai should be allowed on botb is when it fills these three criteria:

1) are the data sources ethically obtained (from actual consenting users who are knowingly and willingly training an ai to sound or draw like them?)
2) is the ai tool large enough that it can overcome a boundary for some less privileged users but small enough that it doesnt become a handicap to NOT use it?
3) does it feel spiritually aligned with battle of the bits as a platform and userbase?

1 is clear - if i decide i want to make an ai algorithm of my own chord writing style and use it in a major then that fulfills these statements since i decided on my own accord i want to do that - or purchasing a new vocal vst that uses ai to create a performance of an artist who has clearly consented to this reality

2 is probably the most complicated one - most ai tools of this caliber would probably not fulfill this role as you basically dont need to try as hard to create something good, but at the same time the goal isnt being good but its having fun...?

3 is really up in the air - i dont think youd consider a drake ai vocal track a "battle of the bits" thing, and there isnt really an ai to create channel f music either, so i think by default many ai tools are gonna fail here as well, at least as of now.

i think it might just be easier to disallow all ai stuff on botb if im being honest, but i want to remain open to some possibility of lowering a barrier to entry for either new formats or whatnot where users genuinely could struggle

I think one of the central purposes of the site is to provide people a place that encourages growth, personal improvement, and development of artistic skills (hence gamification, leveling, competitions). From that standpoint, to me it makes sense to discourage or make illegal generative content unless it is specified in the rules of a battle or a bitpack. I could see it having a limited place if it made sense in the context of an individual battle, but outside of that I think it could have the unintended effect of discouraging development in people that opt to use it.

To put in a different way: the goal (sneakily) isn't really to win competitions, but actually to see what great stuff you personally can create that you couldn't create yesterday. The place provides that along with the ability to connect with others. AI could hinder this.

The tricky part I think will be that it will only become more difficult to tell when it's used.

I genuinely think, specifically for battle of the bits and the intent of the website (being a "music making MMORPG", and being a lot of friends), entries to any battle should not be generated by a generative AI (or modified by a transformative AI) under any circumstances. The final sound, due to the nature of the competition here and heavy focus on helping each other gain incredible skill (rather than "getting high scores"), should be all from the battler themselves working while adhering to the bitpack.

However, for specifically creating bitpacks for battles, I think there *MIGHT* be merit to allowing generative/transformative AI usage for generating samples and examples for music battles, and swatches and brushes for art battles, etc as-applicable. This would basically just reduce the resourcefulness required to host battles of specific types that you may really want to partake in.

Lastly, I think if this comment is taken to heart, it should be considered whether battles which ask for people to use generative/transformative AI should be an exception or disallowed. I think that if a battle host wants to have a battle centred around skill with a transformative AI, this should be allowed, and battles centred around generative AI should only be allowed if the battle requires battlers to transform the output themselves.

It should be an unspoken rule, though. I feel like this is the type of thing that if you list it in the rules, people think to do it.

And considering it can be impossible to tell that something is AI generated, that is not something you want to risk.

Although, I think AI generated music could work as its own format. I think we're all aware that this is on the horizon to change how art is done and I don't think that is something we can stop; so I think it should have its own place.

Obviously, AI that pulls from a ton of different and very much nonconsensual places is not permissible. But when the technology can choose your work as a source, that's not something that we should resist, in my opinion.

I liken it to using a modern DAW instead of a tracker; yes, there are things that make a tracker better, but DAWs and their workflow are largely superior and can do far more. The site therefore seperates them into their own categories. The same should be done for Ai generated music. It's not something that we can just pretend doesn't exist.

Additionally, The idea that AI should and could replace humans is something that marketing executives would love to happen but is certainly not possible. There is a HUGE difference in the way AI makes art and the way a human makes art. Look closely enough at any AI generated art and you'll be able to tell. They are not the same and they never will be. A great video about the topic can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeRtI09Ymvw

I don't think any composer should ever support AI-generated composition the way it exists right now, and I think this community should draw a hard line by not allowing it. I honestly think it's ridiculous that anyone is speaking in support of AI-generated music (IMPORTANT: THIS DOES NOT MEAN GENERATIVE MUSIC AS A WHOLE. THESE ARE VERY DISTINCT CONCEPTS, PLEASE DO NOT CONFLATE THE TWO), considering the way it currently threatens the livelihood of many in our community, and is already actively degrading the integrity of composition as an art-form.

- "It should be an unspoken rule, though. I feel like this is the type of thing that if you list it in the rules, people think to do it."

I really don't see how this makes any logical sense. If you don't make a rule for these kinds of things, it blurs the line between what is acceptable and what isn't. That someone would make a thread suggests that it isn't clear enough whether or not AI-generated works are acceptable on botb.

Yes. I have realized that is probably not the approach that is worth taking, and was more generated from a fear of people seeing that rule and deciding to break it. Looking back I agree that a concrete rule needs to exist

I also contradict myself between the first comment and the last comment: I don't believe it's impossible for people to tell the difference between AI work and non-AI work, but in an OHB, I wasn't sure if people would take the time to listen for it.

While I think the industry will use AI as a means to assist artists rather than replace them in the long run, thinking about it again, it kind of already breaks the rules because AI is, even from a legal standpoint in the US, it's own entity; meaning it breaks the rule that the work must be your own.

to build on what I said previously using what tele has said, if you read this thread without having full context of different types of GANs applicable to art it might be a little confusing why lines are being drawn in some places by some people. To aid with this, I'm going to now write a wall of text explaining current results of the past 40 years of AI research and the specifics that are applicable to art.

What is a GAN?
A GAN is a "Generative Adversarial Network", a relatively recent concept in AI research which is, extremely notably, NOT actually a more complex version of older markovian designs, though with how far markovian designs have been stretched some internal concepts can still be described as such.

A Markov chain generator takes a large amount of input data, creates a number of probabilities for given data to occur, and creates an output entirely based on random numbers and probabilities of the given data, in sequence based on previous data.

A GAN takes a fairly small amount of input data, and creates essentially random things which are then selectively rejected based on stupidly-expensive analysis of training data, usually done in advance, and then performs modifications to these results repeatedly until either a result is "acceptibly-similar" to training data associated with the input data, or the process is halted. ^{[CLARIFICATION BELOW]}

In the case of the GAN, while features of common Markov chain generators remain (pre-analyzing and storing data, selecting based on internal criteria), the actual process is backwards. In the case of a Markov chain generator, the selective action is wholly-creative, while in a GAN the selective action is wholly-destructive. A GAN can contain a Markov chain generator.

An example of a Markov chain generator which should be fairly well-known here is the "vombot" in the official botb chats. As you may know, vombot is incredibly stupid and always incoherent. This is why we love vombot. Moving on.

Is that what "generative" means in your post above, then? what is "transformative"?
No, actually. Generative in this case means a GAN meant to create something completely new from a text prompt, while transformative means a GAN meant to make modifications to something you've already made.

The vast majority of issue with generative GANs relates to corporations gaining extreme sudden interest in them, with the intent to fire artists, while the vast majority of issue with transformative GANs relates to their potential to be used to fire editing staff, and the fact that publicly-available online transformative GANs are often phishing scams packaged as cool filters. These are, indeed, huge issues.

What are you clarifying about your position?
My position is that all art that comes out of a GAN should be disallowed with specific, restrictive exceptions relating to specific battles, but only having those exceptions if agreed upon by the administration unanimously (meaning probably having no exceptions).

That's all

^{CLARIFICATION FOR NERDS: it also needs to be noted that, in actual probability nerd terms, GANs technically engage in a markovian process, but do not create a markov chain, they just are a markov chain}

u could say that the artificial intelligence bomb

is being unleashed!

make music bad enough that nobody will ever want to use it in a dataset

when we say "its easy to tell" when something is or isnt AI generated - remember when we let this win winter chip?

https://battleofthebits.com/arena/Entry/Snabisch+Winter/50680/

something tells me your average voter person isnt discerning enough

I don't think there will ever be any A.I. capable of creating as we do.
As composers we have no limits that cut off our inspiration, we can create whatever we want in whatever sense we want.
If you feel pigeonholed in a particular style, just make a change. Or you invent a new way of structuring and working.
A.I. is fine as an additional tool, although I still see it as far from having incredible results.

gotoplay: I wholeheartedly disagree. I think because this was an emerging form of art and people were interested in how it could be used for stuff like that, they voted honestly. I knew that was AI generated when I voted. It's not hard to tell. It's art, and incredible, but it doesn't look like a human drew it. Do I look back on that and regret my decision? Absolutely. But this was during a time of optimism for AI when it still had more of its own artstyle

me and at least 4 other friends didnt think it was AI until keffie pointed it out. gtap is correct

really dont know how whether or not your personal discerning eye can tell something is AI is relevant. if even one person can't tell a piece of media is AI-generated, it can be true for many people.

02FD, from what I understand, you seem to think that AI-generated media will never reach a level of fidelity at which it is indistinguishable from human-made, but what gotoandplay brought up is proof, within our own community, that that isn't true, and people posting AI-generated media can potentially pass it off as their own handmade work (not that I think that's what Snabisch was doing).

If indeed the ethos of battle of the bits is to preserve the tradition of creating music and art, and especially music and art as it was made with legacy hardware, what place does AI, a ludicrously expensive and exceedingly contemporary phenomenon that seeks to eliminate parts (or all) of the creative process, fit in here...?

i agree that era of ai art looking so unlike anything that it was just something funny to try was cool

but it's really starting to become an issue when it can effortlessly plagiarise people's artstyles or musical styles to the point of studios just employing a bunch of ai algorithms to create stuff instead of paying people

and on a more personal note, i really do hate that. i feel like in a less cruel world this kind of tech would be used to free up time for people so we can focus on said creativity, while these algorithms do some of the work that most people wouldn't enjoy doing anyway. none of this would apply to battle of the bits, which is primarily a site focused around fostering community for those with a creative heart

that's not really relevant to the thread so i'd just say, there's far too little use in ai even as a tool to be genuinely useful after some reflection so i'm for just banning its use altogether, tool or not

my opinion is that AI in its current form for the purposes of composition have no place here at this point. If its process generative or something constructed of your own coding and such that is fine enough, but i'm just gonna say I think AI prompt and learning from other work to create a submission or halfdone submission or even just the foundation of a piece is absolutely lazy, which is against the existing rules. Going a step further, I don't really see how that could be fulfilling for someone either unless you wrote the code, we're past the point of AI generated shit being novel now.


If we want to allow it for individual sound creation, I think that could be argued in favor of. Example: If you fed an AI your snare sample folder and said "make me a new snare" or if you put in all of your field recordings for a texture, etc. this is actual work on your part using AI as a TOOL to create things you will then have to apply in the creative processes we actually seek to work on and demonstrate here (also if this doesn't exist yet somehow it should, this is a machine learning/generation concept I'm genuinely interested in, especially if its not very good at it. Give me all the uncanny valley toms and bells). Sample creation for music's equivalent in visual art would be like... color scheme generation or brush shape generation (which I'd be okay with because you're still applying it in a way that tests and demonstrates your skills and creativity). As a rule I think if we allow this sort of thing it should be necessary to specify your process, like how we typically need to explain a wild chip (except this, again, would be an explicit rule)

happy to throw that baby out with the bathwater if it's the only way to keep the rules concise though hah!

i think that's fair, however i'd also argue that might only apply for mp3 based formats or most image formats we have, since a majority of usable ai models are just that

however we might see things like "build your own ai" where you just drag and drop a few nsfs and it spits out a perfectly original and fully functioning nsf despite not even knowing what a nsf is

in other words This Fucking Sucks (in either case it sucks)

If that happens, I think it may be required for people to record videos of them working on their entries as mandatory proof that the entries are human-made.

Two thoughts:

1) I think that the culture of BotB has a few features which make it, at the moment, resistant to serious damage from AI-generated entries:

• the community is fairly small and tight-knit;
• that community is, through this thread and elsewhere, expressing a clear collective rejection of AI-generated entries;
• as mentioned by kilowatt, roz, and others, there's a strong emphasis on self-improvement and self-expression, in which context making tracks with AI is kind of pointless
• there's a culture of sharing one's process -- while not everybody talks about how they make their entries, a lot of people do, further emphasizing that the process matters just as much as the output. (The use of source files rather than mp3s for most formats is part of this too!)

I don't mean to say that AI-generated entries aren't a problem here -- as discussed above, it has happened already. I absolutely agree that a clear policy on AI tools is needed. But I don't think they're going to destroy the site any time soon.

I bring this up because I think any attempt to enforce policy which impedes participation -- like requiring people to include proof that they worked on their entries -- will cause substantially more harm than it will prevent.

But we should promote that culture of process sharing by talking about our own entries and asking others how they made theirs, which is a good thing to do anyway.


2) I think the first situation that comes to mind when this issue is raised is an algorithm spitting out an entire song or artwork which someone then submits with minimal touch-ups. But as the technology gets more advanced and people learn about it, its use cases are going to get more nuanced, and if AI becomes a serious factor on BotB it's likely to be in a less straightforward role.

So here are six potential scenarios -- not exhaustive, but touching on some of the ways AI could be relevant. Which ones do you think should be allowed? How would you frame a policy to address the ones which shouldn't be?

a) Someone types a prompt into a generative neural network, it spits out an audio or image file, and they submit it with minor or no changes. (I figure almost nobody is okay with this, but it's the baseline. And I believe this includes the example of the Winter Chip cover cited above, so certainly some policy needs to be made here.)

b) Someone types a prompt into a GNN, it spits out an audio file, and they substantially remix it, moving parts around and adding some original material of their own.

c) Someone uses a GNN to generate a chord progression or melody, then arranges it using their own sounds, and adds accompaniment and production of their own devising.

d) Someone uses a GNN to generate a set of short samples, then arranges those samples into an entirely original composition.

e) Someone uses a GNN to generate a set of short samples and uses them as the bitpack for a remix battle. (And does it matter whether the host explicitly mentions that they got the samples from a GNN?)

f) Someone generates a single sample using a GNN and includes it in an otherwise ordinary bitpack for a remix battle. (Here we're in the territory of Sample Pack Contest XVI, whose pack included (obviously) fake voice clips of Barack Obama and Rick from Rick and Morty.)

Personally, I think a), b), and c) are not okay; I have mixed feelings about d); and I think e) and f) are probably okay. But you may feel differently, and I think some clarity here is needed for any policy discussion.

"any attempt to enforce policy which impedes participation -- like requiring people to include proof that they worked on their entries -- will cause substantially more harm than it will prevent."

Care to elaborate? Maybe not a requirement as demanding as a recorded video, then. Maybe a simpler step. In a way, we already need to show proof that we worked in a format by uploading the required extension file and people accept that just fine. So why not add a preventive measure to this new threat upon us?

I'm mostly bothered with people here saying that the proliferation and improvement of AI is inevitable as if people abusing of it will be unstoppable. There has to be a way to stop it from abuse, at the very least. But how to do that in a win-win scenario? I think this question is still something to consider.

When I say a verification policy like requiring a video will cause harm, I'm referring to a few different things. First, it would just make submission more inconvenient. Personally, I would be less likely to participate under such a requirement, and it would add a barrier to the already steep learning curve faced by new users. We don't yet know the impact AI might have, but making it more difficult to participate in a community like this one is definitely not good for its long-term health.

Second, it raises privacy concerns. This could probably be mitigated with a different means of verification, but designing such a policy that's strong enough to address our concerns around AI without forcing anyone to reveal information they're uncomfortable with seems like a tricky task.

Third is something that needs to be taken into account with any kind of verification policy: if the site requires it of every submission by every user, it risks creating an unfriendly atmosphere, because it's implying that everyone is under suspicion all the time. It's certainly not the same thing, but the first comparison that comes to mind is having to take off my shoes and walk through a scanner every time I go through an airport, which isn't an association I'd like to make with BotB.

Now, I don't want to imply that any of these harms are deal-breakers; they would be acceptable if needed to mitigate a greater harm. The second part of what I'm saying is that the harms of not imposing such a policy don't seem that great to me.

And to clarify, I'm not saying that the abuse of AI is unstoppable, but rather that I'm skeptical that the abuse of AI will actually be a major problem for BotB. (And this is the big unknown here! I'm not super confident in my optimism, and I don't want to belittle your concerns. I'm just trying to make the point that the scope of the problem is uncertain enough that we should be careful about solutions with clear drawbacks.)

The main reason I'm skeptical is that there aren't strong incentives to sneak AI-generated music in. It's true that the gamification of BotB is kind of a primal incentive by itself, but if someone starts faking their way to high placement in battles with AI-generated music, their only reward is 1) clout with the small BotB community (which doesn't mean very much when they aren't actually engaging with the community by making music themselves) and 2) points (same thing).

For me, the previously existing issue that seems closest to the issue of AI-generated entries is plagiarism. It's also claiming you made something when you didn't, and it's also easy to slip it by most people if you're careful. We have strongly stated rules against plagiarism, and people do do it anyway -- I believe the site has had to deal with at least one serial plagiarist in the past -- but there hasn't been a need to adopt proactive preventative measures at the level you're describing, because most people don't have any reason to plagiarize, and the costs of being found out are steep.

I absolutely agree with you that there are actions we can take to reduce abuse of AI on BotB. But if those actions will have negative side effects on other aspects of the site, we need to get a clearer picture of what the threat posed by AI is first. For now, I think the first step is to make a clear statement that AI-generated work is not welcome here, and then keep a close eye on what develops.

lasertooth as i was reading your posts i had the exact same thought about the similarities between this issue and plagiarism - started planning a comment in my head, then read the rest of yours and saw that you'd already said it.

i will second basically everything else that you said too - on the values and the practical side.

i also like the scale you provided, & i'm in agreement with you about all of it except d), which i think is fine - i don't see how generating samples is substantially different from picking them out of a pack. in fact, i'm sure before long AI-generated instrument samples are going to start finding their way into sample packs, and at that point there will be no use in trying to resist it.

the whole ecosystem of sample-based electronic music has always disdained the institution of copyright anyway, and rightly so as far as i'm concerned.

[i removed all the comments who seemed to distract people from the actual topic.]

it *is* a really bad look for joke replies to be the first responses in this thread from admins, so please allow me to say: this is something we have discussed both in the past and the present, and you can expect very soon an addition to the rules that i believe focuses on the spirit of what we do here first and foremost. there has been a lot of good discussion here and i also think for the most part our thoughts are in line with the community as a whole. we want to foster a creative space

more words soon

I'm okay with people posting or using AI generated art in their creative output on this site, even though I'm not a fan of it.

I think that AI is a tool just like any other tool (though tremendously powerful and a bit scary because of that) I think although it's a new tool regular rules of integrity apply, you should absolutely be explicit as to how much of the process was yours, in the case of AI music it may be simply engineering a prompt, which may not have taken very long and in that case how much of that composition is yours and how much of that composition is by the engineers who designed the model and the other people's music that it trained on?

Proper citing of sources and being clear about what work is ours and what work is derivative is important for every tool and applies equally well in the case of AI. A project which uses AI as a tool to make a unique, meaningful statement that goes beyond the use of the AI is still art, and the artist's statement is perfectly valid. A project which uses AI as the first and last stop and isn't a tech demo will be doomed to be completely uninteresting. The artist has not done anything new or original and should be judged according to what they said, which ultimately is "I plugged some words into an AI model that I didn't engineer or train and this is what it produced!" Which is amusing like... a few times and never again.

Just in the same way I could punch a public domain song into musescore and render it out on the trumpet sound would not be any more meaningful a work than the process of making a public domain song into shitty midi doots, an AI work is no more interesting than the model itself which the user didn't create (which is facinating!) and the potentially very low effort prompt which the user did create, which is not interesting.

But I'm sure I could find a way to layer public domain songs rendered out in trumpet doots into an interesting work. Just in the same way that I think using AI as a tool can be used to create something which is more than just a prompt. The works should be judged on the creativity of that process as much as the quality of the final work.

This can only work if there is transparency about what is a user's own work and what is derivative though. And so it all comes back to honesty and not being a dick, which actually it's always been about honesty and not being a dick. So actually the problem hasn't changed.

i dont see why that comment about not making jokes in a serious thread was necessary, this isnt a "serious" thread where peoples lives depend on something its just discussion for what we should do regarding ai submissions or ai content being used as part of submissions

fwiw i kinda share miohs sentiment lol (about the ai playing and us working just to clarify)

not to stir the thread offtopic any further, i think if you ask like chatgpt for a chord progression it's probably not much different from writing a script that uses rng to give you a chord progression, so i'd be fine with that being used as a tool for people to build a song upon. melodies i'm less inclined to agree however i think people should try to write those themselves

yeah


edit: i should've phrased my last post a bit better cause the use of ai stuff in art in general is affecting people's lives, this i fully agree with and not for better might i add, i just meant specifically discussing where the boundary is drawn in this thread isnt probably going to affect ppl's lives. sorry i kinda wrote that without thinking a whole lot about the implications

I think a lot of people in this thread are approaching the subject of AI in the vacuum of "how it could affect BotB if allowed on the site", and not enough from the angle of "how the proliferation of this tool will severely negatively impact the livelihood of creative professionals, many of whom value the creativity fostered in this community".

Indeed, the proliferation of AI media IS an issue where people's livelihood depends on it, and I don't think it is alarmist to say so. thousands of artists are already losing work in favor of generative imagery. there is an ongoing WGA strike disputing the use of AI tools in screenwriting RIGHT NOW. it will probably not be long before musicians are hit with a similar wave, too.

And to reiterate what I said before, it seems really strange on this website in particular, where we ostensibly place an inherent value in exploring and celebrating the tradition of making music with the limitations of legacy hardware. Considering this, I don't think it's a stretch to say that the use of AI is twofold against the ethos of this community.

I think the subject of honesty is being discussed way too much here, when these two points here are more or less a nonstarter. What an individual does is up to them, and there are social and mechanical consequences for dishonesty. What we do as a community in response to a rapid shift in culture is what's going to matter moving forward.

with regards to what transpired in this thread earlier this morning, I really dislike the trend of administrators on this website acting gravely offended by any amount of friction from other users and using that as an excuse to escalate into an argument, aiming to put people in their place epic-style instead of acknowledging when they might be detracting from the conversation. often, they cannot even be bothered to respect people enough to hear them out, let alone sympathize with their frustration.

given that this is a subject that means a great deal to some people (myself included), I think its reasonable to want it to be treated with some degree of seriousness. and I think its just as reasonable to be frustrated at people chiming in to the thread without addressing or trying to build on anything anyone else said.

this is like the 3rd time in two weeks that this kind of thing has happened, and i really think some of the people on the admin team need to extend more respect to others, in direct correlation with the power and responsibility they hold as administrators. people think twice about discussing things because they don't want to run afoul of anyone and they know how escalatory people can be. i don't think this is normal for such a small community, and it's gotten to the point where I can't recommend my students use this website for compos.

this probably isnt the most appropriate place to voice these gripes and only stands to derail the thread further, but I really can't stand ignoring this stuff happening right in front of me anymore.

On 2nd thought, I agree yeah, this subject is more important than the usual threads, so I think the jokes should at least be tasteful, if they have to be made. My bad for misreading the room, genuinely.

Honestly, again: I think the easiest solution is just to ban any and all obvious AI stuff and then look out for the less obvious stuff. If things change in the future then so can this blanket rule. It's not like we need to permanently cast the shadow on AI if in like 3 months it's going to be outlawed for everyone but home users and severely limited even then (this won't happen but one can dream I guess).

I don't know if there's much point in trying to iron specifics out when: 1) Most of us agree that in the long run this can get bad if not regulated (and it'll be regulated to the point of it not being "usable" in some areas from what I can recall, which is probably what people want I think)
2) I personally think there's very few actual usecases for AI on BotB, even with stuff like generating samples. I mean, yeah that'd be cool, but on the other hand there's a dozen or so ways you can get samples by recording stuff with your phone or w/e?
3) The chords example, i mean, i've already made a shittier version of this in c# a super long time ago

(and i can probably redo this in javascript and host it somewhere if there's demand?)

For the admin issue, maybe that warrants its own thread for discussion instead of here. I don't exactly know about those other examples telebasher mentioned but if they're mentioned then it's definitely worth discussing before the issue becomes worse.

Doubleposting because, as I've been playing a game and thinking about this thread, I realised something, and I think this is important and needs saying.

One of the biggest reason I'll always cherish this site is that it's taught me, through however many people that were here and its generally nice community, is that it's made me into who I am today - I'm able to call myself skilled in music and generally consider myself cordial. Sometimes I fuck up, but that's true for everyone I feel.

It wasn't an overnight process, I joined around 2014, and we're almost 10 years later since. I've learned a lot. I owe a lot of what I've learned and picked up to this site and its community.

I would really hate for that kind of opportunity to be taken away from others.

I think the thing about this that a lot of people in this thread are missing is that this AI thing... isn't really anything new.

Like, sure, the technology itself in its current state is pretty new and it's progressing rapidly, but this is by no means the first time we've had some huge paradigm shift in the way we create art - Think about how music once had to be performed live, then recording technology was made widely available. Eventually that recording technology became digital and people could create music completely via software... now there's AI. You get the idea.

I think of BotB as a place that welcomes new experimental ideas and methods of creation within the realm of music and art, so I can't help but find it just a tad hypocritical that there are people in this thread who want to advocate a ban of any usage of AI outright.

Think of it this way (I'll use examples prior to the existence of AI tools to draw an anology here): Imagine BotB hosts a vaporwave major or OHB, and half of the entries are just slowed down recordings verbatim of 80s music. The other half of the entries involve clever splicing of samples, more non-trivial mixing and production techniques, original melodies and chords superimposed ontop of all the samplings... you get the idea.

Regardless of whether or not you think vaporwave is "real music", clearly one of these examples is better than the other, and is much more in line with the spirit of BotB. The sensible thing to do in this scenario would be to hand out ailments to the zero-effort entries and/or leave it up to the voters to decide. In either case, I think it's safe to say that, inevitably, the higher effort, well produced entries will come out on top (hell, we've even had one such entry win 2nd overall in a major battle).

Point is, AI really doesn't add anything new to the table here. There will always be troll/low effort entries regardless of the tool used to produce them. The bar is lower now, yes, but as long as there are human artists, they will find a way to utilize AI in a creative manner that combines both their own skills along with what the AI can do. AI still has its blind spots, and that's where us human artists come to fill those in.

The important thing to remember is that AIs are not human. They have gotten better at imitating what we do, yes, but at the end of the day, that's all they are - an imitation. We should treat AI the same way we've been treating any form of digital technology: as tools. Computerized pieces of software that we can manipulate to our advantage. We call the shots. There is a ton of untapped potential that can come as a result of this and I think it would be incredibly silly to try and artificially restrict that.

Therefore, I think the best way to handle the situation is this: Outside of zero-effort/troll entries, I think anything goes. This effectively means that any straight prompt->art generations without any non-trivial changes made to it would be disallowed (which is what I imagine people are the most concerned about to begin with). Apart from that I see no reason to add any more restrictions prematurely. If any abuse of AI technology comes up and is caught, the entry can be deleted and the submitter can be dealt with appropriately. I think a more liberal approach in what BotB accepts now will give us a better idea on how to handle things later, and the rules can always be amended in the future depending on how this all plays out.

That's just the problem for many people though: What's the line for how much AI an entry uses? It could be none, it could be "literally just a prompt the AI tells you to start an idea", it could be "it can tell you a melody and chord progression", or it could even be "the AI can give you samples to work with"

I think for most purposes people here mean purely AIs that can generate songs, either out of a prompt, or out of some unfinished WIP mp3 or wav. There were a bunch of examples a few years ago of someone using an AI to continue Never Gonna Give You Up, there was a 10 or so snippet of the actual song and then the AI had to generate more of that basically. I imagine that kind of technology is a lot better nowadays.

And, also, I don't know if BotB was faced with such a paradigm shift in this domain before. When it was first made, sure, a lot of tools like even FamiTracker didn't quite exist yet, or the however many formats that are available now. However, for the most part, DAWs existed, plugins existed in a more crude and limited form, those have evolved as you'd expect, and now comes this piece of technology that can create a song for you in mere seconds by just having you put words to describe the song. I think it's not only natural, but justified to have people concerned about what this could mean for the site and its community.

I guess the closest equivalent to this is when sampling was introduced. Performing musicians rallied up against the technology, and any other people contributing to it were called "scabs" by their peers, because they thought they were helping an industry or a community fail. This obviously didn't really happen as they expected it would, as tons of musicians are still happily performing.

Perhaps it's the same case here, but now it's about essentially digital recordings made by a human, versus digital recordings produced by an algorithm with minor input from a human. You could argue, it'd be just as easy to tell the difference, but you could also argue the mediums are far too similar and that we've already seen AI replicate human performances with incredible attention to detail, despite its algorithmic nature.

If you were to ask me about this, outside of BotB, I think AI has a ton of uses that aren't necessarily art-related (accessibility would be greatly improved in a lot of instances with AI, I think), or even if they are, they could be very useful for an indie who's prototyping sound effects, or needs some placeholder art.

But, for BotB in particular... well... I'm genuinely unsure what I can add that I haven't already added. People are coming from a place where big corporations are using AI to create art and sounds, and then further drag creatives working with said industries into the mud and out of a job, which I think we can all agree is extremely scummy, and should be a banned practice.

I think, maybe, having an AI give you a prompt or something so you can create something with an idea is likely fine and acceptable. Anything more than that, and well that's why this thread is as long as it is - people range from "No, I really don't want that in this community" to "I think that's fine". Most people are definitely against people submitting a mp3, when all they did is tell an algorithm what to generate and how.

Perhaps it might be more useful to hold a poll, and have people vote on it. I can make one if there's demand and then we can draw a conclusion from that with what the site should do regarding AI content.

My biggest concern is that some n00bs will be accused of "cheating" when they're just genuinely not good at art. I don't think that helps anyone's developmental process. I'm doing my best to understand why so many people are so upset, but it all seems inevitable to me.

Irregardlessly, the admin team came up with a new general rule to appear on the battle info pages:

While generative processes are permitted if designed by the entrant, they should never be used as a substitute for putting real human effort into your entries on BotB.

focusing on music specifically, there's lots and lots of theorycrafting in this thread, but have any of you actually tried to use AI to make music?

it sucks.

you can try and use ChatGPT to generate lyrics or chord progressions or whatever, but all of its outputs will be barely acceptable. like if you ask for lyrics about some subject, you'll get lyrics that rhyme about that subject... and not much else. the meter will be off, the word choice will be weird - there's just a amateruishness about it that anyone with talent will recognise as unusable

i guess you could also consider something like OpenAI Jukebox (something I've not personally used), but given you need to seed it with a start of a song, you'd need the means to create that piece - but then you already have the tools to finish it yourself, and you'd have no need for Jukebox (other than maybe ideas for a following section)

the only success i've ever had with AI generation is that me and my friends once used some of ChatGPT's generated lyrics almost verbatim - specifically "Why won't this stupid AC turn off? / It's mocking me, it's taunting me / With its frigid blast of air"

. but not only was this an incredibly rare outcome (less than 1% of all text i've tried to generate), but it still required our knowledge and know-how to turn that into a good hook, and construct the rest of the song.

despite that, i'd still definitely say that Absolute Cold is our music. we clearly made it - it sounds like the rest of our music. we tried to use a tool for fun, just like you'd experiment with any other tool. but it just so happens that the tool we picked is incredibly terrible at its job and we just got lucky

the following is a personal view and has nothing to do with my words as someone on the admin team.



i have tried to use AI in music. rather, i have attempted in AI in probably 3 songs: once as a randomiser because i dint know where to start, once as experimentation (it failed immediately), and once thru a VST for a cover.

and i totally agree with ipi, there is probably no way to make actual good content easily entirely with AI at the moment. other than jukebox as mentioned in theirn below post, the only abilitied AI music tool i can think of currently is synthv, which imo is
1) entirely ethical training and usage
2) hard to get ur hands on (unless you either hand over like a months worth of wages or take the pains to crack it urself)
3) a tool to take the tedious nature out of programming pitch variations and bends manually
4) almost entirely user-inputted and flexible

as long as future tools take along the form of synthv, imo there is no point to having this thread now, except for a POSSIBLE (as always) something else that may come from a long time away forwards. i do appreciate that people are discussing in here though, it was a good discussion and i learned a lot from here about peoples positions on AI, as well as.. how not to say certain things.

so, although i know where these theoried thoughts are forming from, i think people in here may be a little tad bit too frightly. to those in this thread worrying, i believe AI will not take your jobs or your hobbies this month, this year, or even this decade.