This kind of copying of other people’s hard work without permission is exactly what upsets people the most about AI tool usage. These tools not being used to assist someone in learning how to make it themselves, to find bugs or to try and create something wholely original, but just used to reproduce a close a copy as possible so they can keep seeing the lightshows whenever they want for free.
The artists and developers of the Furality club world who spent hundreds of hours crafting the original Club FYNN with all it’s little details, tedious testing and optimisation of shaders to get it to run across all platforms, and of course, managing and producing the performances, are extremely upset that someone has taken their Intellectual Property like this and duplicated it without it even being something like an intent to learn how it worked or to be inspired by and create something new.
Someone behaving like that should not be surprised if they find themselves no longer welcome by those same creators either at Furality, or in other projects around VRChat they work on, to attend or enjoy their future work if they cannot be trusted to not steal it.
It should also be pointed out, that the entire underlying theme of Furality Ultra was on the nature of impermanance and how sometimes one has to say goodbye to things that won’t come around again. It was a convention that was actually about grief and loss, secretly dressed up as a silly mid-2000s video game theme. So doing something to forcefully revive the world like this goes entirely against the artistic intent of the original authors as well.
Both in private and over social media, I’ve seen creators who have spent significant personal time creating new original works for this platform, talk openly about how tired they are with all of this and how they are now wondering why they should share with the general public at all what they make if someone is just going to steal it with no effort at all and claim it as their own. For world creators, this feels as bad as how many avatar authors have said being asset-ripped feels like.
The use of tools like this only discourages artists from creating and in the end if that continues, all you’ll be left with is recycled unoriginal uploads with nothing of worth about them. And all of us who love to see these original works will find themselves on a dead platform. Much like how on the wider Internet, even some AI supporters are worried that with so much AI-generated content now flooding the web, it’s going to break the very content creation networks they need to train on.
As a world creator myself, I encourage people to 1) learn as many skills as they can, I did so over just a year after starting off as just a programmer and learning how to 3D model, work with sound, design worlds, understand lighting and so on. After that first year I was making stuff that was impressing others and all of it was enjoyable and fun. Even the early mistakes.
And 2) If you really struggle in a particular skill set, find someone to help you and team up. Some of the best worlds on VRChat are made by multiple authors who compliment each other’s skills. Having someone to work with together and be as invested in the project as you are is so motivating and at the end not only do you have a finished artwork but a meanful friendship as well.