I've noticed a surprising number of retro gaming/hardware peeps being weirdly okay with casual use of GenAI. The Italian version of New Zzap64 uses it for their covers, and it just looks hideous, same with some of the retro gaming YouTube channels' thumbnails. - ThreadSky

sharkabytes.bsky.social • 13 days ago

I've noticed a surprising number of retro gaming/hardware peeps being weirdly okay with casual use of GenAI. The Italian version of New Zzap64 uses it for their covers, and it just looks hideous, same with some of the retro gaming YouTube channels' thumbnails.

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polpo.org•13 days ago

And GenAI has disappointingly been creeping into the demoscene, even in oldskool productions. There were a lot of Amiga prods at Revision this year that were pretty shameless about it. There are tons of artists out there that would love to contribute to a prod!

rajelaran.cyberelf.space•13 days ago

I noticed that when watching the Amiga prods, so disappointing.

sharkabytes.bsky.social•13 days ago

Oh nooo, that's so disappointing.

erikarn.bsky.social•13 days ago

ew :(

commodore128.bsky.social•13 days ago

Every day I have the pleasure of clicking "don't recommend this channel to me" on videos that use GenAI thumbnails.

rekawaii.gay•13 days ago

Didn't this also happen with duke nukem where the dude had like 6 fingers in "new promo art"

lukealexdavis.co.uk•13 days ago

It boggles my mind in retro game spaces because it goes against the aesthetic anyway (beyond the obvious BS of it being AI generated)

annie.redpanda.fun•13 days ago

right? so much if it is about being here to see the hardware, and retro tech nerds are also ordinarily obsessed with correctness, so why would you want to let the liar machine spit out an ugly picture of a computer that doesn't exist, with a keyboard that clearly doesn't even have a full alphabet?

cal-pol.bsky.social•13 days ago

It's the clipart of the day, eh? I'm actually not opposed to it in places where the art just doesn't matter (I don't care if a technical manual has some dumb gloopy keyboard on the cover). But using genAI for the cover image for a collection of art? For demoscene prods? Nah man. Have some dignity.

ghostinexile.bsky.social•13 days ago

I keep thinking of doing something with YouTube, but it’s an oversaturated market.

If I did though I’d want it to look like it was made in the 90s, so I’d shoot on Hi8 and title with an Amiga and a copy of Scala.

sharkabytes.bsky.social•13 days ago

That's what one of my favourite (sadly dormant) channels, The Amiga Show, did. It's all produced on Amiga and has such a unique look and feel to it because of it.

extentofthejam.bsky.social•13 days ago

Oh wow. All these old Video Toaster kind of transitions. I never knew about this channel and I already love it.

ghostinexile.bsky.social•13 days ago

That’s cool, I still watch what Daph does which I’ve always enjoyed the aesthetic and feel of.

I guess I just like things cheesy, and appreciate the work in making something deliberately so.

whathosnorkers.bsky.social•13 days ago

On the iPad I played a game called "Pixa", which was a joking homage to Adventure on the Atari VCS. They put a huge amount of work in making it look accurate, something like 30 different filters to make it look like an early 1980s CRT.

I used to use GenAI, now I make my own stuff. It's more fun.

ghostinexile.bsky.social•13 days ago

That’s the thing I’m always more interesting in the how than the end result.

I can happily waste a couple of hours producing something that genAI could do in a second, but it’s mine and the apparent crude nature of its execution holds value for me in a way that genAI can’t replicate.

whathosnorkers.bsky.social•13 days ago

Yeah. While watching Babylon Berlin I became fascinated by the opening credits, and trying to work out how I would do something similar... so I knobbed about with Sinclair BASIC for a while.

That's fun! Requests to Midjourney or whatever don't scratch that itch.

craiggrannell.bsky.social•13 days ago

A lot of retro YouTube people have it generate stills and even short videos now as well. The second a channel does that, I’m done. I don’t want GenAI slop fed to me, and certainly not from a community that should damn well know better.

sharkabytes.bsky.social•13 days ago

Yeah, I just can't grasp the mental disconnect that enables its use. A community that values preservation and old hardware and physical media, and (more often than not) will claim its better than modern gaming and all its ills, but then uses one of the most demoralising horrors of the present age.

craiggrannell.bsky.social•13 days ago

I’m really getting fed up of “not *my* patch” with GenAI. Writers who use it for art “because I’m not good at art” and then whining when people use it for writing. And so on. I’m not a purist on this – eg LLMs have their uses. But if you’re scratch-creating anything with this stuff, have a word.

sharkabytes.bsky.social•13 days ago

Oh yeah, I'm not a total Luddite when it comes to beneficial use of AI and algorithms. We've used forms of it for years, decades at this point, anyone who uses a spell check has, and assistive AI has and will have its place, particularly in medical and scientific fields.

sharkabytes.bsky.social•13 days ago

But yeah, some kind artists will donate their time and skills rather than someone use GenAI and take from them and their fellow creators, same with writers. So there are always options, even if you don't have much money.

blacktopmagazine.bsky.social•13 days ago

I admit that I use an AI eraser on my phone to take stuff out of the background of phone snaps. I have also used ChatGPT at the request of a client (it generated the body copy which we then fact checked and cleaned up, while altering the prompts every 15-20 sites).

81632bitretro.com•13 days ago

I just couldn't bring myself to us GenAI on my videos. At least 50% of the satisfaction I get is from having made the video myself. All the edits, the choices in what to show and what not to, etc.

whathosnorkers.bsky.social•13 days ago

Why do a creative hobby if you don't want to create? I'm happy to use AI to remove backgrounds if that saves me time rendering and rotoscoping, but I do videos as a creative outlet, not a chore.

craiggrannell.bsky.social•13 days ago

I’m no AI purist. There are reasonable applications. I use Photoshop’s canvas expansion and background removal quite a lot when making images for Stuff. What I don’t do is ask a GenAI to make the image for me. (Similarly: using an LLM to reword a tricky paragraph you can’t get right? That’s OK too.)

ghostinexile.bsky.social•13 days ago

I think that’s the thing it boils down to, the one defining question;

Why create?

And for me at least, it’s because I enjoy it, whether anybody gets to see it or not is almost irrelevant, it’s like playing an instrument, the joy exists in just doing it.

craiggrannell.bsky.social•13 days ago

Even if you’re making a living out of it, and want lots of people to see it, you need to be mindful of how components are created. In fact, arguably more so. But I see GenAI creeping in. These folks would be fuming if a fully GenAI channel took their traffic though.

81632bitretro.com•13 days ago

Of course they would.

I personally refuse to us GenAI, but I do understand why some folk, such as yourself, use it. It can help with some often tiresome parts of work (BG removal, etc), but for me... That "tiresome" aspect is part of the journey. Horses for course, right?

giackthedemon.bsky.social•13 days ago

Weird, other italian gaming magazines don't use ai for the covers

nightelectricity.com•13 days ago

its infiltrating every hobby space in ways i find bewildering, i'm into analogue photography and theres so many people either using it for "inspiration" or youtube thumbnails, theres even a site i order film from that puts AI generated slop stickers in the packages for no reason!

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