Carmack defends AI tools after Quake fan calls Microsoft AI demo “disgusting”
Carmack: “Power tools” like AI are “central to all the progress in computers.”…
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I love when regular folks act like they understand things better than industry insiders near the top of their respective field. It's genuinely amusing.
Let me ask you a simple question: do YOU want to play a game with mediocre, lowest-common-denominator-generated AI audio (case-in-point, that AI audio generator sounds like dogshit and would never fly in a retail product)? Or do you want something crafted by a human with feelings (a thing an AI model does not have) and the ability to create unique design crafted specifically to create emotional resonance within you (and thing an AI has exactly zero intuition for) that is specifically tailored for the game in question, as any good piece of art demands?
Answers on a postcard, thanks. The market agrees with me as well; no AI-produced game is winning at the Game Awards any time even remotely soon, because nobody wants to play stuff like that. And you know what's even funnier? We TRIED to use tools like this a few years ago when they began appearing on the market, and we very quickly ditched them because they sounded like ass, even when we built our own proprietary models and trained them on our own designed assets. Turns out you can't tell a plagiarism machine to be original and good because it doesn't know what either of those things mean. Hell, even sound design plugins that try to do exactly what you're talking about have kinda failed in the market for the exact reasons I just mentioned. People aren't buying Combobulator, they're buying Serum 2 in droves.
And no, I have not seen my industry decimated by AI. Talk to any experienced AAA game dev on LinkedIn or any one of our public-facing Discord servers; it's not really a thing. There still is and always will be a huge demand for art specifically created by humans and for humans for the exact reasons listed above. What has ACTUALLY decimated my industry is the overvaluation and inflation of everything in the economy, and now the low interest rates put in place to counter it, which is leading to layoffs once giant games don't generate the insane profit targets suits have, which is likely what you are erroneously attributing to AI displacement.
Do you remember the music from the last Marvel film you watched?
I don't.
Quality isn't directly correlated to success. Buy a modern pair of Nikes or... Go to McDonalds, play a modern mobile game.
I love when industry insiders think they're so untouchable that a budget cut wouldn't have them on the chopping block. You're defensive because its your ass on the line, not because its true.
People gargle shit products and pay for them willingly all day long. So much so that it's practically the norm. You're just insulated from it, for now.
Do you remember the music from the last Marvel film you watched?
I don’t.
"Oh no, all my quality work won't be in the next marvel movie or in mcdonalds' next happy-meal promo campaign, darn. Guess I'll have to make and sell something else."
~ Literally every artist with a modicum of talent, ambition and a brain
What's your favorite big-budget, AI-generated game/movie/show that you've given money to, again?
This is such a flimsy argument that it's barely worth responding to. People by-and-large are absolutely sick of Marvel slop and still seek quality art elsewhere; this is not a novel concept, nor will it be outmoded by the introduction of AI. The internet and entertainment industry at large is still actively exploding with monetized, unique, quality content because not everybody wants slop; most people are actively sick of it. Talented visual artists are still and will continue to be hired in the entertainment industry and will also continue to be able to independently release stuff online because they have their own individual perspective and the x-factor of "human creativity" that AI slop just cannot compete with. Interesting that you didn't address that, but what's also interesting is you're touching upon the reason most people are mad; AI models tend to churn out mediocre work, and people feel threatened because they aren't good enough at their craft to compete with it, so instead of becoming better they scream at anybody trying to advance the technology of their particular discipline for taking away extremely easy kinds of work that they barely had to do anything to get before (patreon commissions, etc.). Work a tad harder, try to express yourself more effectively and I promise you somebody will value your work above the forgettable music from "The Eternals". People with talent tend to break through if they try hard enough, it's not rocket science.
And I addressed the budget-cut thing earlier, so no I am not acting the way you described. Budget cuts are not an AI problem, they're a capitalism problem, as I stated previously. Please read.
INB4 people scream "survivorship bias". No, you're just not good enough, and you'd rather scream and yell at sensible takes from every expert in their field or craft than accept that fact. Legitimately. I know you don't like hearing that, but you need to accept it in order to improve. Get better at your craft. If you can't make stuff with greater quality than AI slop, you're not going to be capable of making things that resonate with people anyway. AI will never be able to do this, and this kind of quality creates sales. AI will be used, sure, but it will be leveraged to improve efficiency, not replace artists
At this point, it should be obvious that no one is downvoting you because they believe you're wrong. Rather, its because you're an inflated, insecure douchebag who's so threatened by the opinions of two federated users on the ass end of the internet, that he feels the need to write an essay about it, not to us, no, to his own ego.
And for the record, I'm not one of the believers. On a long enough timeline, you'll be playing birthday parties dressed as a cowboy. Ai is improving while people have a bell curve. It's only a matter of time. Cheers. I hope you find happiness one day.
Imagine the ego it would take to write something as unbelievably cringe as this personal fantasy about an anonymous person you're angry at just to make yourself feel better.
For the record, I'm autistic and I am highly compensated for my expertise as an interactive artist, so that's why I'm discussing this topic with fervor.
It's also really funny that anybody would ever give a shit about fake internet points, as if it were some transcendental measure of correctness or moral merit and not just an indication of how uninformed, emotionally-driven and circlejerk-y the general public is on social media.
What has ACTUALLY decimated my industry is the overvaluation and inflation of everything in the economy
The real answer, like every creative industry over the past 200+ years, is oversaturation.
Artists starve because of oversaturation. There is too much art and not enough buyers.
Musicians starve because of oversaturation. And music is now easier than ever to create. Supply is everywhere, and demand pales in comparison. I have hundreds of CC BY-SA 4.0 artists in a file that I can choose for use in my videos, because the supply is everywhere.
Video games are incredibly oversaturated. Throw a stick at Steam, and it'll land on a thousand games. There's plenty of random low-effort slop out there, but there's also a lot of passionate indie creators trying to make their mark, and failing, because the marketing is not there.
Millions of people shouting in the wind, trying to make their voices heard, and somehow become more noticed than the rest of the noise. It's a near-impossible task, and it's about 98% luck. Yet the 2% of people who actually "make it" practice survivorship bias on a daily basis, preaching that hard work and good ideas will allow you to be just like them.
It's all bullshit, of course. We don't live in a meritocracy.
Nah, good art breaks through with enough perserverance, time, improvement in your work and a little bit of luck (which you need less of the more of the first three you have). People just underestimate what "good art" is defined as. The bar is now just where it always should have been, which is JUST above somebody copying your work without any underlying understanding as to why it works or the cultural gestalt involved. Not a very high bar to clear, tbh, but I could understand why some entry-level folks feel frustrated. If that's you, keep your head down, push through and improve, you'll get there.
When it's other people's work, well, people need a nuanced opinion about this nascent technological breakthrough.
When it's your specific area of expertise, it's "the plagiarism machine."
You are Knoll's law personified.
And yeah yeah yeah, it does a mediocre job of whatever you do. That's the opposite of safety. Disruptive change only cares about whether it can do the job. Already the answer seems to be a soft yes.
Right now is the worst the tech will ever be, again.
