AI Generated KS page

We discuss a lot about AI-generated art, and JW and I have quite opposite opinions about it (and some converging views as well).

But what I want to have fun with tonight are a new trend: AI-generated Kickstarter pages. Like this one.

First of all, you can tell all the pictures are AI-generated because:

• the box art is inconsistent across the page

• the fonts (!) are inconsistent across the page

• AI is weirdly incapable of generating proper text (I tend to believe that it's a built-in limitation but I have no idea)

• the title is utterly inconsistent across the page

  
  

If you look closely at the picture above with some actual instances of cards you'll see that it is complete garbage. The graphic design of the cards, as well, is inconsistent and physically impossible.

What I find the most hilarious though is the text:

You can tell that each of these non-sensical listings are the work of an AI. An AI I can extract the pattern that a KS page has promotional videos and multiple tiers for the pledges, so it says just that. It spits out generalities without actual content - because there is none.

The description of the creator is plain unreadable and full of insipid marketing punch lines (that's what an AI would do). Don't even attempt to read it past the first three sentences, it's utterly boring.

Now for the game's description - vague as possible, full of clichés about board games, and somehow it feels familiar, something like you may have already read elsewhere (because you did - it's all AI-generated and AI spits out things that have already been done countless times).

And let's not forget the FAQ which is actually quite extensive (12 entries):

I love that the anticipated date of Q4 2024 is framed as something that should appear "long" (so they justify why it would take so long a time), but the Gold Medal of AI idiocy comes to the details of the shipping fees (Switzerland: $20; Europe excluding Switzerland: $20). There is just a plain genius in absurdness there that I feel almost amazed - and at the very least I am greatly amused.

Now, why am I writing this post? Not because I want to denounce the campaign. It's just a drop in the ocean of garbage that is the Kickstarter "Games" section full of porn-like STL minis. The goal of this campaign is crazily high (500,000 euros, no less!) so that even though a few people may get fooled their money won't leave them.

I wanted to write this, first because I had fun and I wanted to share that, and also because this kind of AI generation only works because we so constantly engage in the same patterns. We need these patterns to be efficient and not to think things through too much every time we engage in a task, but it also makes us collectively idiotic, and AI is just exceptionally good at capturing the main beats of that collective idiocy - at the cost of engaging into an electric consumption so high that it compromises most efforts so far to keep global warming in check, but that's just another story.