There has been kind of a backlash against AI in TTRPG and a lot of creators I otherwise respect have gotten pretty heated under the collar about it. Here's my take and if they ever see it, it's probably going to piss them off even mode.

First. It's LLM's have graduated way beyond just find the next word level. The neural nets used are starting, just starting, to rival the interconnections in a brain. It should come as no surprise that it's getting harder and harder to tell AI writing and art from human generated writing and art.

Let me be clear, AI is a tool. A very good tool. But still a tool. It's a computer tool so garbage in, garbage out is even more true than normal. If you give it bland instructions, it will produce bland results. The more detail you put into the prompt, the better the results. Take using AI to produce some art.

GMs should be used to painting a scene with words. Just think about framing, lighting and dive into the description. Like writing for older children, short, descriptive sentences should be the rule. Then take a look at what you get back. If you don't like it, or it looks bland, figure out exactly what you don't like, or come up with something to make it different, add some life to it. Tell the AI to keep everything the same but describe the change to that one thing. Rinse and repeat.

You are the creativity. It is the tool to express that creativity with. Like a very capable camera. Here's the thing. Unless you ask it to reproduce something exactly, it won't. So 'it's plagiarizing my stuff!' is a bogus argument. It learned from your stuff, like student artists are told to. Copy the style you admire and then make it your own.

It's really the misinformed, or the poor artists in the world, who are afraid. Poor artists because if AI can do a better job at what they do, then they are out of a job, uninformed because they are listening to doomsayers and not finding out for themselves.

You can hate it; you can argue about its dehumanizing effects. It's not going away. BTW, these are the same arguments about the camera. Notice where that went? Painting is no longer about simply making a scene but making a statement with the scene. The same thing is happening here. Technical brilliance will lose out to something that makes a better statement that 'Look at how cool this idea is!'

This is true for writing, and for music. Some of the biggest names in music admit they use AI generated music for parts of what they do. The parts they are weakest or bored with.

Now me, I can write with the best of them. I can even draw in pencil quite well, thank you. What I can't do is work in color (I am partially colorblind). What I can't do is prepare five or ten pictures for the game in two weeks. It can take that long for me to get started on a good pencil sketch.

I also use AI to draw decent maps (really, AI maps are a joke at this moment, but they are getting better, I tend to more often scour the web for a free map that does close to what I want and ask the AI to change it into something I want.

So, there you have it. I use AI. I use AI correctly. I'm not afraid of it. I'm not intimidated by it, and for god's sake I am still creative and my players are having a blast at my games!

There. Hey, where did this soapbox come from?

Quoth!