"AI is just a tool" is not how anyone uses AI. They treat AI like a free employee who will do the work for them. Note how people don't say it replaces a paintbrush, but that it replaces a commissioned artist. "AI is not going away" is just a lie, making it seem inevitable so you stop fighting it. Just like how bitcoin is going to revolutionise currency, and now NFTs are the future. I see complete justification in banning the garbage output from the world-burning nazi-built plagiarism machine.

I think one of the features of the fediverse is that you can have a bunch of subs on the same topic (with the same name, even!) on different instances. I assume someday there will be at least one rpg community that bans ai and at least one that actively encourages it, so I think in your shoes I would be asking myself which one I want to run. Personally, I plan on contributing more to spaces that are human-only, but it puts a lot of onus on the mod team to identify and remove ai content, which is getting increasingly difficult to identify reliably.

If they're gonna act persecuted anyway, why not persecute them? A thief might have a persecution complex, but they're still a thief, so you arrest them for theft.

That philosophy never, ever works for communities about specific topics, though. Too many people see it in their _all_ or _subbed_ feeds without looking at where it was posted It's also entirely possible for any individual kind of post, regardless of it being AI or not, to be legitimately decent content for a community but still crowd out other kinds of content that the community wants to promote. That's why many places have specific days for specific kinds of content, like allowing meme posts on Mondays but not other days so that discussions still get to the top > why should I not be allowed to upvote something that I like because it came from AI, just because other people have a moral objection to it? This principle basically doesn’t allow any restrictions on any kind of content anywhere unless it's explicitly harmful enough to raise that as a separate objection. Why shouldn't I be allowed to upvote hardcore pornography on the news community? It's not a practical way to actually run a community

Just because you generally need a cover image doesn't mean that it's good to support systems whose primary use case is to drive real artists into hiding.

Is it still spam if it's posted by different people?

That would depend on the wording of the general rule, which would depend on what exactly it's trying to accomplish.

If someone doesn't care enough about their product to actually do work on it, why should I care about looking at it? If I wanted to see AI generated slop, I'd go to one of the many megacorps that'll generate it for me rather than paying some guy on Itch.io.

Public domain or stock images combined with an afternoon of Gimp/Krita. Had a friend who started with no experience and they managed to make some damn professional looking art for their playbook.

Presumably ensuring that other types of content don't get crowded out. I'm not sure how a general anti-spam rule would manage that. The solution I've seen elsewhere is to restrict certain types of content (like meme posts) to specific days of the week

thanks; that was a typo. I have edited it to upvoted, which is what I intended.

Yes, one can do that. But, probably because of how content ( in broad meaning) works, it's not being done. That's why I'm afraid such rule would mostly cut out the small-fries

I'm afraid they are an exception to what is happening

I am fine with that. 

Sure. But wouldn't such rule mean we dismiss also those who do bring something to the table but just try to get anyone's attention?

Not if they don't scam people to do it.

That is right. But that is not what all AIGen stuff is. If someone creates a cool adventure but uses AIGen to make their fluff box sound like a radio speaker because they lack the skills to make it so, is that a not caring enough?

Exactly. I think that the issue is not black and white

Nope, it isn't.

Cheaters should never be allowed to prosper. It undermines the entire idea that creative work is of value, and will inevitably lead to a day when artists are seen as as much of a piece of scum on someone's shoe as cashiers are.

That's great. And it should be encouraged. But what about modern+ settings?