Daniel X

Like any other consumer, I want labels for the things I care about. That is neither ridiculous nor intrusive. Obviously, if I thought it was a dogmatic purity test, I would not ask for it. Unlike the analogies in this reply, I have never asked for - nor has Steam ever required - a disclosure of Hawaiian holidays, car purchases, political affiliation, or whom a dev dated. As part of my consumer purchasing decisions, I am interested in supporting the preservation of skilled human labor. For example, I bought Cuphead because I wanted to support hand-drawn animation. I did not expect to enjoy the game (and didn't). I might similarly buy a game because they coded the engine from scratch instead of using an off-the-shelf one. I have no independent interest in supporting AI use for game development. That doesn't mean I wouldn't buy a game made with AI, it just means I wouldn't go out of my way to support the developer. Having a clear label (as opposed to, say, a community tag, which is not a warrant from the developer) lets me know what I'm supporting. If I don't have it, I can try to get the information another way, but it is not always possible. Although replies (like the one highlighted here) dismiss the analogy for reasons that are unclear to me, it really is the same idea as buying local, organic food because you want to preserve a certain type of agriculture: I cannot reliably tell the difference between an organic apple and an inorganic one. I am not purchasing an organic apple because I think the organic apple tastes better. I am purchasing it because I am trying to support a particular way of life that I know is more costly for the producer. Similarly, I do not demand anyone else buys organic. I do not myself exclusively buy organic. It's a decision I like to be able to make as a consumer, so I can allocate some portion of my money to supporting things that matter to me. As always, if not enough other consumers want to know the things I want to know, sucks to be me, and it will be unlikely that labels will contain that information. But if a large number do, then you get either a voluntary label, or involuntary labeling requirement. This is not abnormal, and it's good, actually.

A somewhat common but strange response to the consumer request for AI disclosures on products is to suggest that if you did this, you should have to disclose all sorts of other things (how many people worked on the product, what other software you used, what hardware it was made on, etc.) I can understand that some people don't like the idea of having AI disclosures, so they immediately try to think of arguments against it. But respectfully, this one makes no sense. Product labeling requirements are driven by demand, either from consumers or from competitors. There is no significant cross-section of the public asking to know if a game was made on machines with AMD or Intel hardware. There is no significant cross-section of the industry demanding that their competitors list whether or not they used Adobe Premier. Product labeling is not about giving you a complete set of information about how a product was made. It's about giving the consumer information that a significant number of them might want to know before making a purchase. Which ones of these get codified can be driven by consumer demand, competitor demand, or - most commonly - a combination of the two. This is not weird. It's good, actually. And it's especially good if an industry takes proactive steps to voluntarily label their products accurately, because then they avoid the inevitable alternative, which is that the consumer demand for the missing labeling produces a political movement which ends with mandatory labeling designed by a political body.