Terminator Genisys
Image: Skydance Productions

Kickstarter has announced a new policy to preserve humanity (in general) and in art (specifically). In response to feedback from creators and backers, the crowdfunding platform unfurled its new A.I. policy, which will require all new projects to disclose the use of controversial tech during submission, with failure to comply running the user the risk of deletion.

Kickstarter does stress that this isn't a blank ban on A.I.; rather, creators will need to show that human creative input went into the pot and that any and all work that is A.I. sourced, be referenced and cited correctly. Going forward, eligible projects "must disclose relevant details on their project page, how the creator plans to use AI content in their project, as well as which elements of their project will be wholly original work and which elements will be created using AI outputs."

This broad mandate "requires creators to be transparent and specific about how they use AI in their projects". As we increasingly learn to side-eye our fellow human-looking beings, these kinds of policies are going to be increasingly essential in artistic endeavours on Kickstarter because "when we’re all on the same page about what a project entails, it builds trust and sets the project up for success.”

This is kind of a big deal, as excellent games regularly come out of Kickstarter, even if they are predominantly spiritual successors people have been clamouring for years. Ratatan is the newest proof of this newly (just now) documented phenomenon, and we have Guns Undarkness and Penny Blood backing this theory.

Be honest, has a line of code convinced you of its humanity recently? Predict when we get the cool kind of A.I. (self-contained, autonomous, like R2D2) in the comments section below.

[source twitter.com]