Sometimes I read a piece of news that makes me think about quitting my job and walking into the woods where I can become a feral animal, separated from the world and civilisation as we know it because clearly, we’ve gone too far with technology and the entire concept of the internet. I want to log off, permanently.
Balatro Creator LocalThunk Had To State He’s Anti-AI Art
Today’s fleeting spiral of dread was instigated by Balatro fanart, of all things. The rundown is that DrTankHead, a moderator for the Balatro subreddit had their moderator status revoked. It’s hard to track the drama first-hand on the subreddit now, because posts have been removed and locked over the past few days, but basically, a user questioned why there was an AI art tag on the subreddit, saying, “Balatro is a game creatively created by one person, and has a very good artstyle – AI art being posted here will make this reddit look horrible.”
In response, DrTankHead said, “We will not be banning AI art here, if it is properly claimed and tagged as such. This has been done after discussion with the staff at Playstack.” They then said that the subreddit was not for debating AI art. They apologised for their tone in a subsequent post and clarified, “We are always willing to discuss necessary changes to the sub and we value all of your opinions but as of this moment it is allowed.”
Localthunk, the developer of Balatro himself, eventually had to step in and clarify that the moderator hadn’t received a direct order from publisher Playstack to change the flair, and that, “Neither Playstack nor I condone AI ‘art’… I think it does real harm to artists of all kinds.” The ultimate decision was to remove the moderator from the team and now the subreddit will not allow AI-generated images.
At Least Put Some Effort Into Your Balatro Fanart
DrTankHead also runs a subreddit called r/balatromance for NSFW Balatro fanart, where AI art is explicitly allowed. In a post on that sub made after they were removed from r/balatro’s mod team, they said, “I want to slightly change things to accept [people who post AI artwork] into the community here too.”
Comments on that post were pretty negative. Two said, “I hate you.” Comments on an earlier post saying that AI art would be allowed were also mostly negative, with several commenters bringing up the ethics of AI generation and disagreeing with the rule.
Obviously, I agree with them. As I’ve written before, I respect perverts who make their own perverted art. It’s your human right, as long as you’re not being weird (read: illegal) about it. But AI generating it? Good god, what’s the point? Where’s your horny spirit? You’re just gooning for the sake of it. Human beings have been making art since they knew how to draw, driven by nothing but the desire to create. And now we’re offloading our one truly human pleasure to technology that does it worse? Can AI really plumb the depths of your perverse mind as well as you can?
There’s only been one AI submission to r/balatromance at the time of writing. It’s very ugly, and I’m not going to link it. God help us, let there never be more.
Strategy
Digital Card Game
Roguelike
- Released
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February 20, 2024
- ESRB
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E10+ For Everyone 10+ // Gambling Themes
- Developer(s)
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LocalThunk
- Publisher(s)
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Playstack