By Todd Russell
We cover AI at PGM. We don’t do this because we want to be popular, topical or relevant. We do it because it’s new and creatively interesting. It’s all about curiosity. The answer to why, is much more complex. In this article, we’ll try and dissect why.
But first, the legal stuff. There are many eyes watching how AI will be treated in the eyes of the law.
“This week has seen two high-profile rulings in legal cases involving AI training and copyright. Both went the way of the AI companies – Anthropic ad Meta respectively – in lawsuits filed by groups of book authors over use of their works to train the companies’ models.” – via What do the Anthropic and Meta AI rulings mean for music? – Music Ally
Recently, on a live stream I said that my thinking is that the courts will ultimately weigh on the side of training AI with copyrighted material. I’m not a lawyer, and thus it’s just my opinion based on years of covering technology, not anything legal-based. It just seems to me from everything I’ve ever seen and known that teaching and training has been given a much wider berth of legality in the spirit of creative freedom. Time will tell, ultimately, if this will remain true this time around with AI.
For those new to PGM it bears repeating that we sometimes use AI generated images here. We have generated — and human assisted — fully playable games using AI (like Play PGM Sea Hunter inspired by Stern Pinball Jaws Shark Hunter – about 75% AI gen, 25% human coded), complete AI-generated games rules (Play RPG Card Game – Endless Quest of the Fallen Hero (AI Generated Game Rules) – 100% AI gen), we have dabbled with comics created with AI (How To Create Your Own Comic Book Online with AI using Dashtoon – 90%+ AI gen), we have explored AI generation in music (from 100% AI gen to what’s currently being produced and published, more hybrid than pure AI gen). That’s right, I have an AI band called AI Kills that I’m actively taking personal human involvement with each song created (6-6-2025 today is release day for AI KILLS third album STILLBIRTH) as well as the commercial marketing and promotion (almost entirely human as of this writing, btw).
Yeah, I actually like some AI generated stuff, but the answer why remains more complex.
I didn’t write any of the text in this article using AI, although I will show you some AI-generated writing at the end — screenshots of the AI gen text — where I gave it the headline as a prompt and you decide which is better to read: my writing or what the “AI” came up with. I will provide some editorial on why I don’t like it.
Yeah, you can probably guess how this comes out.
TL;DR: Sure, I’m biased, my writing being better to read than the AI generated text on the same subject. I’ve been writing for 50+ years, millions and millions of words and counting. Have written hundreds of stories including several novels. been professionally published and self-published works. I’ve been edited and edited others works and my own. There is simply no “AI” in 2025 that can write professionally or even casually exactly like me. That’s not boasting or bravado, it’s a fact.
But I believe you don’t need my writing resume, friendly reader, to write a more human article on this subject than AI.
Machines can emulate my diction by studying it, they can make it appear to be like something I might write, but they can’t think of the angle and passion I would take. AI in 2025 cannot come up how and precisely what I would say, only copy what it thinks I might/could say, if that was an angle I considered approaching.
Words used in a certain way aren’t merely something, they are everything. Professor Strunk once pounded his desk and cried, “Omit needless words!” and AI text generation is simply filled with needless words. Filled with sentences that restate other sentences but aren’t reinforcement or expansion of ideas. AI is frequently a bunch of text slop that reads like something somebody else copied.
Think about that for a minute.
Where is the true creativity in that? It’s in what way a person does something. You will do things different than I. It’s what makes humans unique. We might act or react very similarly to something, but we would not do the exact same thing. You might use less words than me, or more, to talk about a subject like this. So will AI. That’s because AI is a facsimile. It’s a copy of a bunch of things combined, not really original in its approach to what it’s doing. It’s not coming up with and doesn’t have any independent spin on anything, it’s merely copying from its program memory. And its program is a collection of a lot of different people writing, saying, doing stuff. The machine is pulling bits and pieces from all of those human-created things to make something.
This is — and remains — my fundamental problem with “AI” in 2025. It’s not sentient like human beings are. We can see when something isn’t right, we can feel it. Machines don’t feel anything. They don’t have empathy, unless they are programmed to simulate empathy and humans can by our very nature detect empathy. We sense it in what we read, see, touch and hear. We also sense phoniness. And most AI generated stuff feels phony.
So, how then can humans and AI generate some amount of creativity working together? What can AI generated anything offer to human creativity?
Randomness on a large enough scale can result in creativity.
Let’s start with a dictionary definition of “creativity”
Note: Britannica’s definition. Creativity is “something new” … whether it be a “new solution to a problem” or a “new artistic object or form.” AI generation is using copied and learned human knowledge, it’s blending and mixing this human knowledge and work and returning a type of artistic object or form. Is it creative what the AI generation did? Technically, yes, it is. The problem is the ability used isn’t from a heart, a type of lifeform where risk exists. Any time a human being creates something, we do it with time that we are losing every single day. Every hour, minute and second we are dying.
Computers, machines, they aren’t losing time. They have neverending time as long as they have power supplied to them. They don’t die. We do. They aren’t sacrificing anything in their work. Because their work isn’t work that takes anything away from them except their ability to focus on another task.
Every article I write here, every Twitch stream live, I’m giving the readers, the viewers and/or listening audience, part of my life I can never have back. Never. I’m 100% focused when writing and editing this work that it says what I feel at that moment.
My feelings might change on a topic over time, after reading, researching and learning more. And then I am faced with updating or writing a new article to express why these feelings have changed, but you can bet other humans will notice these changes and wonder why. This is what I meant by phoniness. Humans don’t like being deceived. Humans want to be getting something honest and heartfelt, not lying and heartless.
Humans understand and comprehend change. Machines do not.
There is great risk to human beings that machines do not and cannot feel — yet. When these machines have that form of life, where they can die, they can truly create the way a human being can do, because they are using time they can’t have back.
Now, if somehow with technology there becomes a way to carry on what I do here at PGM with machinery, that is living past death. I am curious how that might work? Who wouldn’t like to live longer? I sure would. I don’t know how long, but I want to beat my death clock by not just a little, but a lot. We are playing that game, btw, come play with us here: Play The Ultimate Game: Beat The Death Clock
I digress. Back to why we use and explore some forms of AI generated content at PGM — and again, all text here, unless clearly denoted as “AI-generated” is 100% human written and edited — this is quite intentional. I just don’t think the AI generated text is good enough — yet. It doesn’t meet my own PGM editorial standards and who knows if or when it ever will. If you read PGM, you are reading content created by human beings for human beings, unless noted differently. I like and want it to remain that way.
And yet some have criticized how dare we use or explore any sort of AI generated content here at PGM? This I understand and respect, but not exploring any sort of AI generated content in the gaming space specifically is silly for one simple reason: we have been playing games with some form of AI for a long, long time. The first time we played against the computer in something, we were playing with AI.
To ignore AI opponents in games is nonsensical for a publication about games. We have to stay on top of what AI is and does whether it be in the form of opposition in games, graphics or rulesets in games “created” by AI and so on. It would be a form of editorial incompetence to ignore AI generation entirely. To dismiss it as having absolutely zero value in gaming.
To say some or even a lot of this perspective has been met with everything from disdain to hostility would be an understatement. I find that to be disappointing in humanity from creative standpoint. I mean, what is creativity, really? Stop and think. Go back to the definition. We’re trying to look at a new artistic form here.
The simple way to look at AI generated content is to call it theft of hard-working human beings on a grand scale. A con. A scam for the ages. And while I would agree that a lot of it is pure garbage, I can’t side with completely ignoring it being either wise or, frankly, human. Maybe AI generated comes up with something creative we do like someday and that’s the start of something … different and cool. I want to be a part of that and share back with others. When or if that ever happens on any large scale remains to be seen, but PGM, at least as long as I have anything to do with it, will be there.
We use some placeholder images here at PGM that are AI generated. Would these be better if they were drawn by human artists? Yes! Recently, I started labeling these images and went back through the hundreds of archived posts and labeled every AI generated image. I’m doing this because I think the biggest problem for publishers using any AI generated images and/or text is disclosure. If we fail to disclose this, we’re potentially manipulating the readers and that’s not good.
Now, I’m going to share with you some AI-generated text to read as an image. To show you what this article would give you written entirely by AI in place of everything I wrote above. To see how it took the same topic idea I have in the headline and what it thought this would mean and how it would share back this with you. I will continue with my human commentary afterwards.
AI-generated Article Text using a program called StealthGPT (https://www.stealthgpt.ai/app-free?tool=essay) that creates essay text, here is the prompt I used verbatim:
Now, the unpaid result is a max of 350 words, where I used about 1,000 so far, so let’s look at these output panes — entirely AI generated 1 of 6:
AI-generated panel 2 of 6:
3 of 6 AI-generated:
AI generated 4 of 6:
AI Generated 5 of 6:
AI Generated the final panel 6 of 6:
The AI generated text article is not horrible, but is pretty bland. It reads more encyclopedia-like. It sounds like a paper for school, which is the intention of the program. Also, note the complete lack of rhythm in the piece. It just is one similar-sized paragraph after another. Very formulaic.
Nothing is broken up like this.
Or this.
This program exists and is promoted to generate “stealth” text that students can use to write research papers and potentially deceive teachers, saving their time in writing grade-worthy research papers. Let’s skip the morals of using this instead of just sitting down and doing it right: writing on a subject from your heart and mind, based on your knowledge, experience and research, and look at how easy it is to see this wasn’t written by a human being. I don’t think this is fooling any decent teacher that pays attention. At least any that is seriously reading and grading it. If I was your teacher after you turned it in, the grade would be an F with the attached note: “This lacks both passion and individual credibility. Try writing it from your heart next time.”
Yeah, AI probably wouldn’t want me as its teacher.
That said, despite wordiness, I think the conclusion by AI in the last paragraph is why AI in 2025 is largely ineffective in creative works. It’s a broken solution to creativity at worst and at best it is an idea machine that sometimes can spin you out in a different direction.
That doesn’t mean AI text generation will never evolve into something good or that it can’t be useful to get a human being to think in creative ways s/he might not otherwise think or feel. That, to me, is the primary benefit of AI generated content, that it can quickly throw back variations. Ideas that could then be “created” by a humans.
Personally, I’m finding the most value right now in AI generated music, because it can be matched up with creative storytelling in sometimes compelling ways. I’ve always enjoyed writing to music created by others and (rarely) music create by myself. Over the last year I’ve increased my listening to AI generated music. In fact, while writing this paragraph I’m listening to an online radio station (https://oadro.com/) that plays exclusively AI generated music. All different genres, styles, mashups. It’s not all to my musical taste, of course, but it’s definitely mind expanding.
So currently, anyway, that’s where my interest in AI 2025 exists. Next month, next year, in 10 years or more, this could all change and these machines could start creating better text than they are now. Maybe even something most would want to read more regularly. They just aren’t there yet with the tech.
What do you think, readers?