Comment by faidit
2 days ago
Genuine question (this is more about code than art): Since some indies brag about having no "assistance" whatsoever, is it still AI-free if you ever asked an LLM for help with a tricky programming problem, and incorporated that knowledge into your game's code? What if you just used a search engine and your eyes glanced over an AI-generated answer? Or you unknowingly benefited from an AI-written post or StackOverflow answer? I mean, is it really possible to code without any AI assistance any more? Also what about using third-party assets, that are likely to have a fly in the ointment somewhere (maybe at least a tiny bit of the asset creator's code involved asking Claude for help, or they tangentially benefited from a Google summary).
As much as I dislike the taste of AI slop, it seems to me like AI has so thoroughly permeated the internet at this point that a truly AI-free game is impossible unless you are a programming genius and/or independently funded to a point where you can hire domain experts for everything, such that you could make the game fully offline without even going on the internet at all. I actually find it hard to believe that anyone could code a game above a minimal level of complexity without searching problems online and using at least a tiny bit of AI-generated/summarized info, even unintentionally.
For writing code, actually you have to use "AI" instead of searches because search has become useless in the last couple years.
If you blindly copy paste the results though, I'm sure there are some smart people in north korea writing automated generic exploits by hand for vibe coded web sites...
> search has become useless in the last couple years.
google.com has become useless in the last couple years, all other search sites are doing fine or improving.
Thanks for the input, I still don't think there's a really clear distinction though :/
Like the fact that it's impossible to search without AI now is sort of my point, since the AI-free badge is described as projects being completely free of AI assistance, which only seems possible if you go completely off the grid while developing.
And how would one distinguish blindly vs non-blindly copy-pasting? If you use a line of code written by Claude or ChatGPT, and it works, and you need this functionality, are you supposed to rewrite it in different syntax? That seems equivalent to having AI generate art for you and then copying it by hand with different colors or slight modifications, which is still using AI imo.
I want to declare my own work AI-free because it almost totally is, but I feel like I'd be dishonest because I've definitely asked LLMs for help before and incorporated their code. Even if it was just a few lines and insights and I made changes here and there. And at least some of the assets I've used must have had AI help too. Sorites paradox kinda