Thinking about the genAI slop problem on digital stores
Update while writing: I started thinking about this yesterday, then got to write this post this morning, went to check how itch's dealing with the filtering and, would you look at that, they are already using this idea. I'll still post what I originally wrote and leave it on the internet because, unsurprisingly (maybe), itch is still a niche storefront, so I think the more people talking about this approach, the better. If you don't know what itch.io is, go check it out.
I've been reading about itch's problems with AI slop, and I guess that at this point everyone is also aware of the slopfest that Steam has become. The biggest issue is that genAI in games is almost impossible to detect, especially if the devs behind it did their best to hide using it. Another problem is that these people hate disclosing they are using genAI — despite believing "it is the future".
On the other hand, real devs and artists proudly say (as they should) that they don't use genAI. So I've been thinking about it and... what if, instead of filtering out — as in, removing from the search results — the few games that admit to using genAI, we filter in — meaning "show only" — the games with a "no AI" tag? And obviously, every game released before ChatGPT's debut would be automatically tagged.
In non-curated storefronts, I think this would be the best approach. I hate genAI as much as the next person, but even if the big companies shut down, we now have people running local models, and they aren't going to vanish or start to watermark whatever they make.
Man, I hate this so much.