I know now that I’m not the only one who cares about this, despite many horrible people who are still on VRChat who tried to tell me otherwise…
Things made by real people, with real soul, matters! It matters to me, and it matters to others! No matter how many jaded old furries who use AI to generate questionable content there are, I’ll gladly speak up if it’s to stand up for what I believe in!
VRChat is worried about “harassment” for AI users??
I’d ask you to cry me a river, VRChat, but it still wouldn’t add up to all the water wasted by that accursed silicon, bleeding our very planet dry, and causing vulnerable people in a community you supposedly care about to be laid off!
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that:
I’d rather fight against the “status quo” no matter what!Especially if that status quo includes normalizing and excusing the use of generative AI!
This whole thing just makes me upset. I just found out about it today and I literally just got into the game a few days ago. It fucking sucks how big AI is. I really no longer want to touch this game anymore until they take off AI completely, or actually implement those filters. It has soured the whole thing for me.
Maybe the VRChat devs have people who are already using or planning to use AI, and this is their way of protecting those specific individuals while guilt-tripping the rest of us for raising concerns
I can see two potential topics VRChat may be trying to address with their approach:
Pleasing the prideful crowd that celebrates “no AI” in world thumbnails, by proposing a human-authored label for worlds (or if that proposal fails, a tools used label);
A desire not to filter their own AI-assisted worlds with official events and accessory drops (e.g., their GPT-6 Astra implementation of HOLODJ in the Spookality 2026 - Camp Whispering Screams world).
Our individual power is small, but we’re more powerful together as a group- if we don’t want AI destroying the things we love, we need to reject it as a group.
VRchat wont let their game die, just to please luddites. Part of me would honestly love an AI filter, so people would stop crying about AI, but I also know that it would discourage any serious creators from actually using AI.
A serious creator who actually cares about their work knows not to use AI, first and foremost. Secondly, I don’t think you understand who the Luddites actually were- they weren’t people who just went around and recklessly destroyed manufacturing equipment to protect their jobs, that’s a gross oversimplification and calling people “Luddites” for rejecting technology that exists almost entirely for nefarious purposes with real ethical issues is just outright irresponsible and dishonest.
Also not using AI isn’t going to kill the game. It existed well before AI did, it isn’t tied to AI at all. You can just… Not use it. No one’s hands are being forced unless management is doing that. There’s no mandate to use it just because it exists. GCC and Clang both exist as C compilers, nobody had to start to use Clang for their projects when it became a thing just because it came into existence. It’s the same with LLMs, their mere existence doesn’t obligate you to use them.
And in fact, it’d probably make the game better not to use them- it’d stop an onslaught of poor-quality, low-effort worlds. There’s tons of open source projects that show how opening the floodgates to AI goes- take a look at Godot Engine’s recent announcement about AI contributions and you’ll see how letting any old idiot with a Claude subscription put in a PR to a well-known project worked out for them.
The latter point is called a perverse incentive. If you’re running a platform where your creator economy would be harmed by AI, and you’re using AI and know people will be repulsed by that, you have incentive to hide AI usage as it would impact your bottom line.